Anton Pavel

I'm sure I don't need to tell you this, but starting with Scales of Thoth is extremely powerful, almost overly so. It's pretty much a guaranteed +1 to everything since the cost for the Scales is minor in comparison. Now, you do have it placed on a character that optimally uses Scales as a 4/4 character, but the main reason Scales is so powerful is due to the accessibility of it during any phase. All that being said, there's nothing necessarily wrong with having a character that starts with Scales, but it does usually become that character's defining trait.

In relation to his story, Scales is basically an absolute fail safe. It's literally impossible to fail your personal story with Scale of Thoth since if you would ever be in a position to fail, you can use Scales re-actively to avoid meeting the criteria of the failure. Additionally, the pass condition is actually pretty easy. Anna Kaslow is most frequently seen on Independence Square, so you can get yourself to five clues and then just sit on Indy Square having encounters. Eventually, you will either have an encounter with Anna Kaslow or you get sucked into a gate while holding 5 clues. Alternatively, you can see which allies are available at the start of the game and if Anna Kaslow isn't available you just ignore your personal story altogether.

Okay, maybe it's not actually that bad, but it is a little too easy. I would recommend changing the fail condition to be something a little easier to fail.

His main ability is fine since it only allows you to use leftover movement points and you can't use it to pick up extra clues or take extra encounters. However, it can be a little strong if he can still fight monsters during the extra movement given that he's a 5/4 on fight and will, and is effectively a 6/5 with Scales factored in. Also, what happens if a monster ends his movement the first time? Does he get to move again on the second movement phase?

Ovi Laveau

I'm sure I don't need to tell you this, but starting with Gruesome Talisman is very powerful.

Okay, I'm mostly joking. Mostly. Gruesome Talisman is actually quite strong as a starting item since it allows you to max your fight in most combat instances without having to worry about horror checks nearly as much.

Ovi is an incredibly flavorful character. The combination of terminology, manipulation of "occult" entities and starting with the most voodou of items (Gruesome Talisman) all really helps set the right tone here. I kind of wish his ability did more though, right now it feels like the Gris-Gris of Legba is only helping investigators deal with gates to the other worlds, not the other worlds themselves. I kind of feel like it should be closer to Jim Culver where it manipulates the other worlds into having an extra color available. But, whatever you choose, I do feel like it's not really doing much right now, ESPECIALLY for it's current price.

Pass Condition should say "If there are sanity tokens on 2 different Other World locations". Here's some bad news you might not like to hear though:

I don't think anyone that plays this character is going to use his ability outside of some dire circumstances, and I'm pretty sure they'll just ignore the personal story. So you need to toss 2 unique items at the end of 2 different Other Worlds without sealing at least the first of those gates, all for the ability to slightly adjust monster movement. You fail if you ever seal a gate, which is usually something you want to be doing, and the price of failure is...pretty much nothing. In fact, if you never discard any unique items and seal every gate you can, his failure actually doesn't do anything.

I think that if you found a way to make his main ability a little more enticing, it would encourage people to want to use it more, which will in turn encourage players not to fail his personal story.

Thanks Aquas. Insightful, as always. And I will likely add my rambling response/thoughts when I get home from work. I do think there're some great points here, and the fail condition on Anton was something I was already thinking about changing. As far as the pass, yeah, it could be easy (if Anna is even available) but it will still likely be a minor distraction if you want to pass. And the boon isn't particularly great, although it's a nice option to have. I did, however, NOT see that the fail could be avoided re-actively. That obviously means the fail is going to have to change.

And I actually was considering making Anton a 3/7 character, but the possibility that Cthulhu might be the AO made this a very terrible choice in conjunction with the Scales. Nobody wants to play a 2/2. And yes, Anton would be able to move again if his movement was interrupted due to combat. But since it does end the movement phase, he would only be able to fight two spaces worth of monsters at max. And personally, if he CAN kill them all, more power to him. Usually you walk away with a few wounds (if not grievous ones).

As for Obi, those are thoughts that I had as well. Although, I'm not 100% sold that his ability wouldn't be used. A +1 on all R'yleh gates, for instance, is much more useful that a +1 on Dreamlands. I'm trying to think of a way to "power-up" the ability without completely changing it. But I also don't want a player to automatically choose to make a Gris-Gris, as I'm trying to encourage essentically two ways to play Obi. One being a gate-sealing spell-caster, the other being a spell-caster with strong utility (via spells) and co-op player.

And yes, the Gruesome Talisman is quite good, but if you do want to create a gris-gris right off the bat, the option is available at a considerable price.

Perhaps his "pass" could also give him a clue for each OW that has a token on it. this would give him additional incentive to complete it. Or maybe when he creates a gris-gris investigators with a corresponding gate trophy gain a clue (or two).

Also Aquas, is Obi a good flavor? Or is he a flavor that you think players will be confused by or ambiguous towards? I think I gather that you both think he's a good flavor, but I don't want to assume. People have different tastes.

A thought just occured to me regarding Astrid (the gossipgirl I posted a bit ago). We were having the dilemma that while good, her ability doesn't always play into the game, making her a bit of a all-or-nothing investigator.

I don't know how to explain in thematically, but do you think giving her the ability to remove Mystic Environments at the cost of taking a corruption would enhance her allure? I really love corruptions, but they so seldom come into play. Again, it is a situational ability, but a investigator that can deal with both Rumors AND Mystic Environments might be very desirable even if neither end up coming into play. You will feel MUCH safer, just having Astrid around.

Or do you think this would be too strong? (I'm not sure it would be as mystic environments cycle anyway, and the only one that REALLY bothers me is the one that prevents sealing gates)

I would bemore inclined to have her handle something along the lines of a Headline rather than Environment. Maybe if you wanted to use Environments, go with Urban since it's a bit more her pace. But you're right about the Corruptions. They just aren't relevant unless playing with the Black Goat of the Woods.

Okay.. I think I've got it all straightened out for these last 3. Just some ability adjustments (additions) and PS tweaking in Anton's case.

The final (hopefully) playtesting of my 8 custom investigators commences this weekend. Thanks for all your help guys. I will likely be moving on to a custom MoM scenario next. But I'll try to make visits to the board to leave feedback for you guys too.

Haven't made any Investigators in a while so I thought I'd give this a shot again and go with someone a bit more straightforward!

Dr. Faust, there are a LOT of things I really like about this character: his story, his 3 focus, and the strong concept and lore tie-ins for the PS.

BUT... I do have some concerns. First of all, his fail result on his PS will allow the player to automatically retire Ray since he will have both an injury and madness. Also, if he draws two of the same madness... what happens? Is he devoured after being ressurected? Seems like a silly result. Possibly you can ensure this doens't happen by adding "two DIFFERENT madness cards" to the effect. But we still have the issue that most players will just retire him for a brand new character that doesn't have these 3 traumas.

Also, I feel like "The Perfected Potion" might be a bit too strong seeing as how he has a base 6 fight AND 4 will already. The guy has almost no weakness in the areas that matter most(Spd/Will/Fight) for a non-spell caster, and then they are improved with his pass condition. Also, the trophies/clues make less thematic sense than creating a brand new task as the Pass condition with places that tie into his story for flavor (maybe Graveyard, Hospital, Science building?). If this is too easy, add a trophy/clue cost (but maybe not so high). And in addition, I think the pass effect should maybe just be a potion to avoid being devoured once. Or maybe a potion to fully heal himself once. His stats are already great.

Penultimately, I like the ability mechanic, but it makes more sense for a "sniper/hitman" than it does for a pilot. I imagine the rifle is what he uses to target the fliers. If the idea is that he's supposed to dogfight them, you might consider forcing Ray to go to a specific location where he houses his plane first in order to fight fliers (perhaps with some bonuses?).

And lastly, I am not sure the "brother" needs to be in the story. It muddles the backstory a bit without enhancing much. If you really wanted to keep the mechanic and change Ray into a soldier/sniper, it wouldn't take much effort, but you would have to work around the plane scenario.

But kudos on creating a very interesting character. I love to see focus 3 investigators. But for having that much focus, his stats do see oddly high. I guess two 3's will let you do that, but since they're in his most unused stats anyway, I would highly consider removing his other PS bonuses. And starting with a 6 fight and a rifle is nothing to look down at either.

I took a lot of your comments into consideration and made some adjustments. I agree on the ability and I"ll save that for a sniper character, but Ray definitely will stay a pilot, so I had to rethink his ability. I liked the plane idea, but it seemed little reward to do what one could basically do by standing in any given street. Then I thought--what if I could make a pseudo 'lost in time in space' since it IS a plane he's flying? THat would mean, he would have a reason to risk the fight in the sky.

Looks much better Dr. Faust and seriously fun to play. I may even use add him to my own collection. But one more thing: in the 2nd paragraph of his "story so far," there is a typo/missing word. I think it should be "If he had been,. ,"

Also, just found a 2nd typo in the ability. You have the word "must" twice in a row.

Kudos!

Yog-sothoth darnnit! SO CLOSE! XD Thanks, I'll make the adjustment!

All the same, I'm glad I was able to find a good work around and that he is so interesting to someone, typos and bad grammar not-withstanding. Like I said, I'm going to try and find another way to work in that 'sniper' ability with someone else, I think.

I have a question:

The custom investigators that I have created all use images that I found while doing various image searches, and for this reason Boardgamegeeks will not approve the file upload.

Is there a way to get around this? I am not an artist and cannot create convincing artwork in the same style as the game. I want to share them with people as I have worked very hard on them. I included a disclaimer with my files stating that all images could and would be replaced upon request and that the files were to be used for personal private use only.

I could remove the images, but to be honest, they really reinforce all of the hard work that I put into each character's background. And as far as a I know, the other sets of investigators hosted there do not have original artwork. If they do, I am sorry to assume.

Is anyone artsy enough to make original art for these 8 characters that look like the ones that I am using now? Or do you guys have any other alternative suggestions?

I have a question:

The custom investigators that I have created all use images that I found while doing various image searches, and for this reason Boardgamegeeks will not approve the file upload.

Is there a way to get around this? I am not an artist and cannot create convincing artwork in the same style as the game. I want to share them with people as I have worked very hard on them. I included a disclaimer with my files stating that all images could and would be replaced upon request and that the files were to be used for personal private use only.

I could remove the images, but to be honest, they really reinforce all of the hard work that I put into each character's background. And as far as a I know, the other sets of investigators hosted there do not have original artwork. If they do, I am sorry to assume.

Is anyone artsy enough to make original art for these 8 characters that look like the ones that I am using now? Or do you guys have any other alternative suggestions?

Well, one alternative is to make friends with artists and ask for some submissions. You could just practice drawing them, which will take a while, until you have something worth keeping. To be honest though, I'm surprised they still won't let you post them on the site even with the disclaimer and intent of use. Maybe try asking if they can spare any leeway, or at least find out why they can't. Negotiation goes a long way, etc.

Or you could just take the images off. Easiest, most painless solution who's only problem is removing a lot of the personality. That is definitely the easiest solution by far, but for what it's worth I wouldn't settle with that either. Good luck to you.

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Since I'm here, I'm been messing around with some stranger investigator concepts and wanted to see what people thought (Don't worry about the stats, I'm mostly just curious about the abilities)

Jinx's abilities allow you to capitalize off of Encounters that involve destroying things (generally speaking) , and also make it harder to stop her from "having fun". Jinx is designed to be a character that hates getting bored.

Yuzuriha's is designed for taking risks and getting bit benefits for doing so. If you are willing to risk fighting all the monsters on a gate, you can shave a whole turn off of gate running. Exhibitionist is something I'm especially curious about, mostly because I want to know how often people can see themselves using it, if at all.

I have a question:

The custom investigators that I have created all use images that I found while doing various image searches, and for this reason Boardgamegeeks will not approve the file upload.

Is there a way to get around this? I am not an artist and cannot create convincing artwork in the same style as the game. I want to share them with people as I have worked very hard on them. I included a disclaimer with my files stating that all images could and would be replaced upon request and that the files were to be used for personal private use only.

I could remove the images, but to be honest, they really reinforce all of the hard work that I put into each character's background. And as far as a I know, the other sets of investigators hosted there do not have original artwork. If they do, I am sorry to assume.

Is anyone artsy enough to make original art for these 8 characters that look like the ones that I am using now? Or do you guys have any other alternative suggestions?

This is why I did my own art--despite people saying that there were 'better options'. I use a modelling program to make the images I want, then put them into the game. Therefore, I created the images and no one can argue it.

I'll get to the characters during the course of the week, but your art looks great Dr. Faust! I wish I was artsy enough to manage my own. :/

What I would recommend is this: create the files to upload to BoardGameGeek but don't put a picture in. Just leave it blank and then add a 'suggested' bit of artwork in the file. Leave a link to it in the 'Notes' section of the .eon and that way if people want the art you intended or picked out, they can and no one can complain.

Meanwhile, here, just put in the picture you want.

Aquas: Reagarding Jinx, I think her abilities are pretty interesting, but I'm curious if this can activate mutiple times in one turn, or if she has a fight during her second movement phase, etc. The closing of locations is thematically interesting, and helps to prevent jinx from steamrolling everything in the way of a lesser investigator. My only real problem with this ability is on the off-chance that an encouter moves her to a location with another investigator and it ends up closing, thus throwing the other player into the street. This could be (rarely) a trainwreck for a coop game. Potentially punishing other players with another investigator's ability is sort of risky in terms of in-fighting. I try to avoid this myself, but sometimes I get caught up in how cool the ability would be and I have to fight myself while deciding what to do.

As far as Yuzuriha goes, I personally feel that the exhibitionist ability is a little too powerful as Horror Checks are technically skill checks. This means that (at some risk), Yuzu could encounter a stack of enemies and choose to only roll 1 die on each, quickly amassing a large pile of clues. This become an even larger problem if he/she (?) become blessed.

Additionally, the first ability brings up the question of what occurs when a gate opens on Yuzu. Does he/she still move directly to the 2nd phase? Or is it supposed to be at the risk of charging a monster on the turn it appears?

It's not a huge deal, but could be pretty abusable if you have the patrol wagon and high sneak or an easy way to pass evade checks.

Aquas: Reagarding Jinx, I think her abilities are pretty interesting, but I'm curious if this can activate mutiple times in one turn, or if she has a fight during her second movement phase, etc. The closing of locations is thematically interesting, and helps to prevent jinx from steamrolling everything in the way of a lesser investigator. My only real problem with this ability is on the off-chance that an encouter moves her to a location with another investigator and it ends up closing, thus throwing the other player into the street. This could be (rarely) a trainwreck for a coop game. Potentially punishing other players with another investigator's ability is sort of risky in terms of in-fighting. I try to avoid this myself, but sometimes I get caught up in how cool the ability would be and I have to fight myself while deciding what to do.

As far as Yuzuriha goes, I personally feel that the exhibitionist ability is a little too powerful as Horror Checks are technically skill checks. This means that (at some risk), Yuzu could encounter a stack of enemies and choose to only roll 1 die on each, quickly amassing a large pile of clues. This become an even larger problem if he/she (?) become blessed.

Additionally, the first ability brings up the question of what occurs when a gate opens on Yuzu. Does he/she still move directly to the 2nd phase? Or is it supposed to be at the risk of charging a monster on the turn it appears?

It's not a huge deal, but could be pretty abusable if you have the patrol wagon and high sneak or an easy way to pass evade checks.

Jinx: Get Excited only triggers on an Arkham Encounters phase, so the only way to trigger it on fighting a monster is during an encounter that says "A monster appears". Fighting a monster during a Movement Phase doesn't cause it to happen. Also because it only triggers on an Arkham Encounter phase, triggering the Ability would look like this:

Upkeep --> Movement --> Arkham Encounters --> Second Movement (Jinx only) --> Other World Encounters --> Mythos

Which makes it impossible for the ability to trigger multiple times in a turn. It also means that it's hard to "accidentally" close a location with an investigator in it (while quite possible to do so intentionally, which I'm okay with)

Yuzuriha: I guess I should clarify that getting sucked into a gate doesn't cause Ainsel Lost to trigger. You need to actually enter it, not get pulled in. So, bad wording on my part and good catch. I also hadn't really thought about the patrol wagon interaction, which is extremely strong. I might modify the ability to say "If you enter a gate with no monsters on it ", which would require you to remove them first. We'll see.

As far as the horror check situation goes, I agree mostly that Exhibitionist can allow her to steamroll off a pile of monsters on their horror checks if she chooses to only roll 1 die on the checks. Doing so successfully keeps her sanity fresh and fills her up with clues. The reason I think that might be acceptable is because that means you are forcing yourself to roll 1 die when you otherwise might roll more, and thus running the risk of failing horror checks more easily on a 4 sanity character. The theme of play with Exhibitionist is Risk vs Reward, so I feel the execution of this particular issue is acceptable.

I do agree that she might be a little too strong with blessings though. I'll try to get another game or two of playtesting with blessings in mind before settling on a final design (this is still Beta version design) . If it proves to be absolutely abysmal with the blessing factor, I'll likely change the second clause to say "you may choose to roll fewer dice than normal and treat the roll as if you weren't blessed "

Ah, my bad on Jinx. I missed the phase portion when I was thinking of scenarios in my head. Glad I could be of some help with Yuzu.

And I love the idea of high risk/high reward characters, but I'm always a little worried about things that can provide multiple clues in a single action. It's something I'd probably like to playtest myself before committing. But I think the abilities in and of themselves are pretty cool. I'm sure I would appreciate them even more if I was familiar with the source material.

Good job.

Thanks Aquas! I had a chat with a couple of the file admins, and my investigators are now up on BGG's file section! Here's a link: http://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/98384/8-new-thematic-investigators-w-personal-stories#comment4314881

They are fully playtested, but a few may have things that need tweaked possibly. If you're interested in the end-product, here it is.

I've done something terrible. I managed to create an investigator that only requires 1 skill slider to play with.

They called me crazy, they said it couldn't be done, BUT LOOK!

SCIENCE! THE DAY IS MINE!

Just a thought but--heaven help you if you fail to pass a Gate closing check. If I'm reading this right, if you fail and have to wait a round, the next time Upkeep occurs, she will HAVE to change her slider to another color which means she will HAVE to move on the corresponding color which means she will HAVE to lose her Explored marker.

I'm afraid you read it wrong. Horizon Strider is a may.

Okay you're right, but that aside, she is INCREDIBLE in the stats regardless.

She is listed at 2 for any given stat that has no slider, if I read this right:

That means that, at any given time, one could flip flop back and forth between Fight (4/3) and Lore (5/2) and literally be set for the game. The reasoning is this: most paths have a Black and White. Now, the first thought that came to my mind is, oh, well, she can only move two spaces so that really balances her out--but then two spells and two Unique items more likely then not have her set for any combat she will encounter since most spells only have a check of 1 or 2 anyway. If she happened to get any decent Skill she would effectively be rounded out--if she got a Speed, she'd have at least four movement points at any given time. If she got a fight, she likely would be set in Combat, if not also for Checks. Same with Lore.

I think the main thing here is that, on paper, the weaknesses stand out in the 2-For-All respect, but then you really have to look at it mechanically. Chances are greater than not she will get at least useable gear. And if not, one good round of trading could get her what she needs. If you played her totally on her own, with no other Investigators, she /might/ have a challenge on her hands, but with a team of even two others, she really could crush at any field at any time.

That's actually a fair point. I'm gonna try to get in one game to see how the mechanics are working out, but the second run will probably involve different itemization.

Hi there

I haven't done a search, so I bet there's about a million of these, but I DON'T care! I wanted to do this!

He crazy, he's wild, he's unstable and he's wondrous . Put him on your team tonight!