kroen said:

Oh, well, in that case he's overpowered ;'D ::laughter:: seriously. It would be *very easy to break the game with him, all you would need to do is buy all the tomes and then you could use him to draw an eldritch tome every turn. Of course, he could also be used for getting the Necronomicon and Livre di Ivon easily. He'd probably be a first tier investigator, but maybe a second tier. He's not entirely self sufficient, so I'd say maybe second tier.

First you say he's overpowered, then you say he's tier 2? What's up with you?! And you have any idea how many tomes there are? It would take you the entire game to buy all the tomes, not to mention $30+ at least. Good luck accomplishing that. You know what? print him and play 10, even 20 games with him. If you get your "combo" to work once I will eat my hat and agree he's overpowered. But until then, please spare you your insaney impissible "combos". Thanks ahead.

kroen said:

I like Rose. It's an interesting concept. You might want to give her one more will though (you can replace it with a sneak point), her combat's pretty weak, I mean, *extremely* weak, and three will characters are crippled in combat because they can't pass horror checks reliably, even if well equipped.

Necromancy's pretty cool— I can't remember what ritual blade does thought. Still, both of these characters seem interesting and balanced.

kroen said:

Three investigator game with three bank loans is all it will take really. The only reason I won't say he's tier one is because he's not self sufficient, he needs one or two other investigators backing his ability. (Realistically speaking, this makes him tier one because this is a coop game after all). Still, he would be fairly weak (::laughter:: and by this I mean tier two) in a one or two player game. Seriously. I could pull it off *every* game in a three player game if the other players were willing to cooperate (or if I was playing solitaire three investigators).

I hope you have an extra hat :')

Thank you. Is it really so hard to give constructive criticism?

And Ritual Blade does this:

edit: I was talking about the post above your post. now it seems you're back with your craziness... go ahead, make that game plan... while you spend all of your investigators going along that silly path the ancient one will awaken. good luck with that. I would bet my life on that you would never be able to pull that combo before the ancient one awakens, espcially with all expansion there are literally dozens of tomes. For once be realistic.

kroen said:

If I remember correctly, there's about 20-25 tomes in the complete unique item deck— all expansions included (it's closer to 20 I think). You're right, it is a little harder than I made it sound, but I wouldn't bet your life against my being able to pull it off. Starting cash, three players, assume $20, 3 bank loans. That's fifty. If the other players are dedicated to money raising (newspaper) and riverdock trading, they should be able to raise the rest. As for gate closing. Welllll, a three player team has a seven gate limit. Low frequency gates should be closed without sealing (and traded for cash on the way out). While hunting for the 20ish tomes, you should probably be able to get 1-2 elder signs. The KiYs, even if you only get one for the first while, is another sealable gate... So, even if you aren't clue collecting most of the time (raising money instead), you should be able to get enough to seal three gates. Illuminated manuscripts won't hurt. Eventually you'll be able to get the dhole chants and the Livre (to search for an alchemy— an additional $3 per turn).

Kroen, I'm concerned for your safety :') please don't bet your life.

On further thought, I'll agree that it would be a little difficult to pull off with three players. Not impossible though, not nearly impossible. Four players could do it with relative ease though, I think. An extra 15 bucks and character to fund raise and keep the gates from hitting the limits.

Even in theory I don't believe you or anyone else can pull this off. Not in theory? good luck with that.

Also, I feel sad for you, really, I am. You have lost all sense for this game. The purpose of this game is to have fun . I doub't it's much fun spending all your turns shopping and getting money. Even if your plan would be possible (which I doubt it is) it would be removing all the fun from the game. Not because it's good, but because it's boring . I would rather lose an eventful and exciting game than to win a boring, shopping and money earning game. But you have fun.

kroen said:

I disagree, I think it would be very fun, at least the first two times. Alternative victory techniques are actually quite entertaining to me. I still think it would be too easy with four players. But it'd be a bit challenging with three players.

kroen said:

It's easy to tell others they don't have a clue. How about supporting your position with a bit of concrete evidence?

Actually, I think, all of your custom game elements could use a bit of playtesting.

I also think you would be well advised to rethink your attitude towards criticism. This is the internet! Get a grip, already!

I disagree, I think it would be very fun, at least the first two times. Alternative victory techniques are actually quite entertaining to me. I still think it would be too easy with four players. But it'd be a bit challenging with three players.

I agree! What are you two even arguing about? Good grief, just because you have different ideas of what makes the game fun...

It sounds like this investigator's ability provides an alternate game-winning strategy which would take up all the investigators' time. That's fine, as long as it really WOULD take up all the investigators' time. I suspect that some sort of random event would turn up to completely wreck the plan, but that's true of the actual plans than the rules allow you to make, too.

In other news:

Hellen Klair has too many Common items. Scrap the fixed ones; they're not much fun anyway.

Margaret Heller , on the other hand. has too few. Give her a random Common or two. Give her a chance of getting a gun! Otherwise she's done for.

diana stanely suffers from the same situation as margaret, but she has 1 common instead of the 1 unique, and she's still one of my favorite characters, and according the statistics she's the most popular investigator, too. Not all investigators have to be perfect. Some would be more powerful than others, some will be less weak. That's how it is.

Kroen: Your last 4 investigators have been well thought out and seem quite fun and interesting. Good Job!

I decided to test Avi's "combo" with Erwin Jennings with his fixed wording to see just how powerful it truly is. Here is an action replay:

Game 1: Got a large number of good tomes but couldn't go throught the whole deck just yet. The combo is daunting to try and get and seems almost impossible.

Game 2: Yuck! this game was worse than the last. I spent all of my time trying to get the combo but could get it done! I'm beginning to think Avi might be wrong.

Game 3: I Get the combo early on and the game becomes easy as pie. I used "Ashcan" Pete and Jenny Barnes to maximize my chances this time. Once the combo was online there was nothing that I couldn't do. Need clue tokens? Get the King in Yellow. Need spells cast? Get the Seven Cryptical Books of Hsan and the Necronomicon. Gate limit about to be reached? De Vermiis Mysteriis is your tome. Every cool thing is at your fingertips.

Wait a moment..... Whenever he gains a non-tome unique?

Game 4: Parked Jenny (with retainer) and Erwin at the Curiosity Shop and had them both buying items. Jenny buys cheap unique, gives to Erwin, Erwin changes into a book, repeat. Ok this ability is broken and need to be fixed!

You actually played with him? wow, my hat is off to you. And yeah, I hadn't thought about trading...

kroen said:

Well, ok, but I think the most constructive form of criticism you'll find on these boards is the type whcih says "such-and-such an investigator is a bit unbalanced; here's how I think it might be fixed..."

That's the sort of comment I'd like people to make about my stuff, and until someone gives me a good reason, I'm not gonna stop commenting on other people's work in the same way!

Dark Jco. said:

How many characters are you using? And were you using the Newspaper for retainers and bank loans once you went low on cash? Did you use the river docks also?

Avi_dreader said:

I was using three every time and I wasn't trying the really easy ways at first of getting money. Also I was being sarcastic about you being wrong Avi I was just seeing how hard you had to work to break him. It only took moderate pressure to break him unless you use the abuse I posted in Game 4. This character clearly needs to be revised to get tomes only when he would recieve unique items from encounters.

BTW Avi: It seems you won your debate with Kroen. Now to watch the hat eating.

Dark Jco. said:

Good thing I talked him out of betting his life. I'm waiting for the thank you Kroen. And the hat poo ;')

Hellen and Margaret seem to be weaker versions of Darrell and Gloria, respectively. Margaret partly makes up for that by having a Lore stat that makes it far easier for her to close Gates compared to Gloria, but Hellen is really outclassed by Darrel in every respect. For both, once your down to one or two Sanity, they might as well have no ability.

They are weaker than the Photographer and the Author in most respects, but I think the abilities are a better implementation of the same idea.

I have a bit of a grudge against investigators like Darrell and Gloria who pick their encounters - it seems like it takes away the suspense, because when you draw a dangerous encounter with a big reward, you can usually 'play it safe' by picking a low-risk, low-reward encounter instead. It's much more fun if you have to decide to spend Sanity before you find out what you're getting. Then there's a real judgement call to be made: the devil you know versus the devil you don't. I think I'd have fun playing Hellen and Margaret, even though you'd probably end up worse off than if you'd been Darrell or Gloria.

thecorinthian said:

Tnx.

p.s. regarding erwin- it's still boring as hell to go with that plan.

Some videogaming/tv investigators:

more:

Heh heh. I guess you know that's a bit mad, but that's the point, right?

thecorinthian said:

It's typically expected that fan characters won't be balanced. I was reading these and thinking of possible stats for a Terminator (and how ridiculously overpowered they would be).

Really? I thought they are pretty balanced.