The Ninja 's great. It seems to me that he could get extra points several times in the same turn, because when he ended up in a new location, he'd have to encounter any monsters there. This isn't necessarily unbalanced, although I suspect it's very powerful. I may try it out.

Katana is an amazing item - it's not unreasonable for him to have it, but if anyone else is ever going to be able to get it, it should probably cost $6 or even more.

Re: the Roboticist : I did test out the Rabbi I made, and tbh it wasn't that great. It's entertaining, but it's too rubbish at first and then too good later on.

I was thinking that the spawn should probably only to be able to move only 1-space-per-turn, except that there ought to be some way that the investigator character can cause it to 'move with him'.

"Any phase: Exhaust this item to cause Robot Minion to move 1 space on the black or white path. If this moves the Robot Minion into the same space as Edward Cianelli, refresh this card."

So during the movement phase, you can move yourself one space, have the robot follow you, move one space again, it follows you again, and so on, and so on. So if you're willing to escort the robot, it can move as far as you can (plus one space further). Of course it can still only move on black or white paths, so it can't follow you into locations - it has to 'wait outside', which I think is quite a funny idea and not totally inappropriate.

Also, 'toughness two or less' covers too many of the game's monsters.... like, about two thirds of them, including some really nasty stuff like Colours Out Of Space. The spawn monster would still be pretty good if it only killed Toughness 1 monsters, but I think we need to look for a better way of determining what monsters it can kill. You could expand the monster's movement ability to:

"When Robot Minion moves into a location which contains a monster with Toughness 2 or less that does not have Physical Resistance or Immunity, Edward Ciannelli defeats that monster."

That means it won't kill vampires, colours, hounds of tindalos, and a few other nasty supernatural things. However it does just add a whole bunch of long words. My rabbi character was called Jacow Loew because both those names are short, so when you have to include them on another card, they don't take up much room. I like that your guy is named after a guy who played mad scientists in Republic serials, but if you're gonna fit the 'phys resist' clause on to the monster, you probably need the guy to have a shorter name. Like, seriously short. At least shorten his first name to 'Ed'.

I like the Ninja too, and I'm going to play it this very night!

Just my advice:

His main ability is very nice- and I'm not sure it is *that* overpowered, though I'd just give him 1 extra movement point only: ok, it would allow you to "jump" to any adjacent monster, investigator or location, but his base speed of 4 just compares him to any Speed 5 investigator.

The -1 to all skill checks doesn't sound good to me: if his problem is a "foreign language", I'd restrict the -1 to Lore and Will checks (for Encounters only).

BUT: I'd just remove the "foreign language" thing and add the following:

BUSHIDO : Upkeep: If Fujibayashi (oboy, I'd change hisname if I were you ) has not the Katana with him, he suffers a -1 to all Skill checks.

This would prevent him from giving it to other investigators (I'd hate seeing Joe Diamond wielding a .45 and the Katana, rolling +7 combat checks with the "6= 2 successes" bonus).

I'll try this out and tell you.

Just a small update to one of my previous characters. Name was Isabel Winters, but since Jenny's sister's name is Isabell, I changed it to Anastasia. Also created personal story cards to accompany her. This is for the people that won't play the custom characters, since they don't have those. I plan on creating more personal story cards for some of my other characters as well. Just, since Strange Eons can't currently do that, it's taking me some time.

@ Gott - I look forward to seeing how he works out for you Gott! I hope he's fun! thanks for the suggestions also; I gave him the foreign tongue ability because the rooftop run ability is meant to be very powerful. I could make rooftop run less powerful though, and give him a story continues card to power it up... thanks again!

@ Corinthian - We'll have to keep working on the investigator-using-a-monster thing. I think it's really intriguing, and would make for a very interesting character to play. I'll see about playtesting him too and see if there's anything I notice. Thanks for the feedback!

@ Cimmerz - Nice! Has Strange Eons been updated?

I have not read this whole thread. But anyone make HP Lovecraft, the author?

Hehehe... yes! It's the one idea that everyone thinks of.

But if you want to have a try, go for it. You won't be the first - or, I suspect, the last...

Admiral142 said:

I tried him yesterday night: we played two games and I found him working fine and balanced when using the following adjustments:

-Rooftop Run only gives 1 extra movement point.

-I didn't use "Foreign Language", replacing it with "Bushido" (-1 to all skill checks if he loses his Katana).

Luckily I never lost the weapon in both games, but moving just 1 space is not that strong: it allows you to kill multiple, adjacent enemies, or to kill any monster that just exited a gate and then jump in the gate itself... or just enter any location and have an encounter there. It's nice.

Maybe, you could change the Rooftop Run to "Once per turn".I really like playing the ninja: while I don't like ninjas very much, I found your character very funny and well-made.

One of the best custom investigators I ever saw!

Why don't you post his "story so far" and work on a Personal Story, along with its pass/fail conditions?

Here is Fuji's story so far (I shortened his name ):

<name> has come to Arkham on a mission. He has been tasked by his employer to investigate the state of the Asian community on the east coast of the United States. While it's not <name>'s business to question why, he suspects that his employer may work for the Yakuza, and may be planning on expanding the reach of the Japanese Mafia to the shores of America. That's fine with <name>, more work for him.

So far though, this city is not ideal. While in Boston, <name> heard of a small Japanese community in Arkham. Stepping off the boat, he can instantly sense a certain wrongness here. Besides the grotesque - almost fish-like - appearance of the dock workers...

There are spirits in this place. Oni? Whatever they are, they are unclean, diseased spirits, surely. <name>'s training will serve him well in this accursed place. Looking around at the buildings, he plans his route...

Here are his story cards. I made two sets. One for the originally posted version, and one taking into account your suggestions, Gott:

These are my first attempts at personal story cards, so sorry if they suck. Another idea I had for him was: Pass - fighting a monster no longer ends fuji's movement. I also had some others, but I can't remember them right now.

Here are some personal story cards for my Wizard, Oscar Zoroaster:

I look forward to hearing what you all think! And thanks for the input so far, it's been really helpful.

Having taken Corinthian's suggestions into serious consideration, here for your approval is Alucard mark two.

Alterations include changing start location to south church, tightening the wording of control Art Restriction, and replacing Eternally Damned with No Life King, which gives Alucard the nearly-unique (shared only with 1 ally card and Petrifying Solution) ability to claim and thus negate Endless monsters. This fulfills a useful role (dealing with some friggin' annoying monsters permanently) and is again pretty unique.

New alternate variant for people who don't own Black Goat is changing his starting fixed weapon to a .45 automatic and giving him another random Unique Item.

Never tried this before, so I'm not too sure about the balance on this, particularly the Addiction ability. I wanted it to be different from the Addict madness card and give bonuses for spending more on the habit.

I've been working on the problem with The Rabbi/The Roboticist, and I think a personal story card may be the answer:

Also, I changed the Robot Minion to S.P.A.M., based on his personal story. Additionally, I changed his combat modifier and his awareness. He still gives other investigators at least one die to try and avoid him, but I didn't want it to be too easy due to the personal story cards. His combat modifier should make him a little easier to defeat, though if he isn't defeated (but defeats the investigator instead), he remains in play and can still be used by Ed. Oh, I changed his name too, as you probably noticed.

Finally, the tweak on the remote control:

I may playtest this tonight, or the Ninja, I haven't decided which yet.

Here is another investigator that I have been working on for my custom expansion:

The problem here is that Granny Orne can be exhausted instead of spending a clue. I think this may make Fern too powerful. Alternatively, I could make it 2 clue tokens to supress the ongoing effect, and as long as she had granny, she would only have to spend one. I gave her a +1 focus adjustment because her special ability may never come into play.

As always, constructive criticism is welcome! I love all the ideas for custom investigators that everyone has. Thanks for sharing!

I hope the wording is ok, I just couldn't seem to get it to sound like I have it in my head, lol.

Just from looking at it (I guess it depends what boards are in play), Previous Journey looks extremely powerful. Even if it only goes off once in a game, that's one gate you'll be able to close without anyone having to go in at all, possibly sealing as well.

mattherobot said:

I was worried about that, but then I thought, there are game effects that allow players to close or seal gates and they don't break the game. And it would probably go maybe once, or twice if playing an expansion per game only so I thought it would be balanced.

How about this guy?

His madness card virtually makes him have 3 stamina and 5 sanity. I thought that would balance out him having +1 to all skill checks.

great character ivory tower! that is the kind of character i like playing the more twisted ones! i think that maybe another small ability would work for him, like reducing horror damage from monsters.

Definitely a hard ability to gauge. Given that he can get one "free" insanity (I'm assuming there is only one of his unique insanity) he will always have +2 to all checks, at the cost of whatever his second insanity does. Beyond this, the question is whether one would risk the increasing chances of getting devoured in order to get an ever-higher bonus. I think most games you could probably get up to +3 without too much difficulty, but the insanities might start to become a problem by then. Seems interesting, though.

mattherobot said:

I agree completely. I think it's a fascinating ability, good work! But it needs playtesting to determine how powerful it is...

In my experience, regardless of what sort of character you're playing and what tactics you're using, there are usually a few Madnesses which are basically harmless and a few which shut you down completely. However, even with this in mind, this character does lend itself to cynical 'kamikaze' tactics: you start with the character, hand all the items to someone else, then run into the same monster four times in a row in order to acquire four madness cards. If you get devoured, big deal. If you end up with +5 to all Skill checks ever , it's more than worth the time taken. And if you want to avoid further Madness cards, that's easy enough to do for the rest of the game. Many of the nasty Madness cards affect clue tokens, and with +4 to all skill checks, I doubt you'll need many.

The trade-off of a random madness for a skill bonus is a great decision for a player to have to make, although you could make it even more interesting. Here's one idea for a variation: instead of just a flat +1 bonus per card, make it "Any phase: Before rolling a skill check, exhaust a Madness card in your possession to add a bonus die. Madness cards refresh during the upkeep." (That has a similar effect in relation to what the investigator plans to do in a turn, but it makes it harder to be complacent about surprise threats. If you're exhausting the cards, it's possible to have a lot of Madness cards and still get caught with your trousers down, so to speak.)

Alternatively, you could add a second ability which really messes with people: "Any phase: Whenever <name> fails a Skill check, <he/she> draws a Madness card." Although that might be too much of a perversion of how madness cards are meant to behave.

Anyway these are just ideas, it might be fine how it is.

I changed him up just a bit. Any thoughts? I'm striving for balance. And I gave him a different starting madness. Added a personal story as well.

Got a couple new Characters. These are characters that where designed to test the limits of the power scale of the Strange Eons engine. They are not necessarily balanced, but they weren't intended to be. They were intended to see if the system could be broken. All in all, I think it was an interesting experiment.

@ivory_tower
Stanley's definitely interesting. I just have a question. What happens if he's supposed to draw a Madness card when he already has 3. Granted, I don't think I've ever had a character with more than 2 in my games, but it could happen. Would he just ignore the situation, or be forced to do the discard items/clues option, or discard a Madness card and draw a new one?

@Feonor
My problem with Feydor is that he takes what makes Dexter .... Dexter, and then adds something that makes Daisy powerful, making Feydor more powerful than Dexter in all possible ways, since Feydor is also a 6 Sanity character with 6 Lore. I know you want him to be a useful Spell caster, but giving him Dexter's ability and then improving on it just seems unfair to Dexter. This may just be my opinion though. Others may disagree. I'm just not big on investigators sharing abilities, especially in the case where they share another investigator's LONE ability.

My other problem with him is all his fixed possessions. I much prefer random possessions, and maybe 1 or 2 Fixed, but Feydor has 6 Fixed. I think they could be trimmed down. Does he really need Call the Azure Flame? My advice would be to let him keep Nameless Cults or Dusty Manuscripts, and if you really want him to have Expert Occultist, then let him keep that too, and let him have a few more random items or even a little money.

hehehe, Tremere....

Admiral142 said:

hehehehe.... somebodye else got it... hehehe....

@Cimmerz

I agree with you in pretty much every way regarding Feydor. I didn't really intend him to be played, and know he is broken in several ways. At he same time, he registers as completely legal in Strange Eons. He's a bit extreme, and I doubt he would be fun to play but that really wasn't the point for this one. Honestly, I find it hard to create new Specal Abilities, as I have little to reference against to gague how balanced they are.

I do find it ineteresting that there wasn't much constructive criticism on Lix....

So what happens if Alucard gets devoured when Yog-Sothoth is the AO? Something better than an infinite chain of LiTaS, I hope.

McCaber said:

Lose a turn and then return as if from LiTaS. That seems the most straightforward way to handle it.

I've really enjoyed looking at other people's custom characters! You all are very creative!

In honor of the GI Joe movie (actually more in honor of the classic cartoon), I took a shot at drafting Sgt. Slaughter into the Arkham universe.

Ok, I think I've made this guy really powerful for the purpose of moving to and killing monsters. His special ability is from one of the investigators in Innsmouth. His sword is an official ceremonial sword of the Marine Corps, and the M9 Beretta is their official sidearm.

What do you think?