I know that as this character is, he's half baked. I could really use some suggestions to balance him out.

So obviously he's a brawler, and the idea is he starts off cursed and (probably) without any good items, so he can be hard to use out the gate, but once you lose the curse, he can do some real damage. There is also some inspiration being drawn from the PA special charater "Gabe", with not being able to use certain types of weapons. I figure this will keep his dice rolls from ever getting insanly high, but the 6's count for 2's should make up for it. Ignoring physical resistance (not physical immunity), makes sense thematically, and places him as a good solid fighter against most monsters.

I had a ton of money(points) to spend on his stats due to the curse and lack of items, so i bumped up his Sanity. This may have been a bad idea and make him TOO powerfull, but i wanted to offset the inability to use the games most powerful weapons. I would like to imagine him as very smart, though uneducated, and use to years of mental abuse from the likes of the circus goers, hence the low Lore and high Sanity.

There is no rule for ranged weapon may want to say physical weapon, common item, etc

sophia is way too powerful, your turns will be like

lose 3 sanity gain 2 unique items

lose 3 sanity gain 20 dollars

lose 3 sanity gain 2 skills

???????

come on that is lame why not have it say

lose 3 sanity win game?

6 fight and a bonus to horror checks? And dice bonuses?

Its cool if you want to make really overpowered characters if that is your thing but these guys unbalance AH and are very not fun too play with. The characters u are making are more powerful than any character that FF has made. If you need a meter look at Daisy, she is the most powerful character in the game. You should never make a character that makes her look weak! Unless that is what you want but then why not make Superman and Thor and all kinds of way overpowered guys. AH is about normal guys facing huge odds, and you are always meant if you win to barely win against AH. Just my 2 cents.

Ranged attacks?? huh Are we playing the same game?

MrsGamura said:

eh, there is probably no real way to make him work as a character, looking over it again. It could be made so that he can't use any items, but ignores a monsters damage modifier. Playing a character that can't use items would probably end up being boring in the long run.

I can't wait to see the 16 new characters in the new expansion and what they came up with to keep things fresh.

pittplayer said:

She doesnt have any of those abilites...

I think what Pitt is saying is the bonus the ally gains when he joins. Doubling that when discarding. But I didn't really read the rules that way. I think it was originally intended to mean you could sacrifice Granny Orne and gain +1 lore and +1 sneak (or whatever she gives you) doubled, so +2 to each until the end of turn.

And you'd draw a random ally, I think, at the graveyard, anyways.

These are my first custom investigators being posted here, so I welcome all criticism to help make them more balanced. I've actually been working on them since before KH was released, and our group even tried a few of them out, but they took a backseat after a while. With Innsmouth, the new investigators saw a reprive in their creation.

Anyway, some background on these investigators. One of the things I was trying to achieve was more teamwork orientated investigators. AH is about working as a team to stop the Ancient One, so the majority of these special abilities I tried to make were about helping each other out whether directly or indirectly. Carolyn Fern, Vincent Lee, Mandy Thompson, and Leo Anderson all have abilties similar to what I'm talking about. Who knew I'd ramble that much.

Sid is a fighter, and his ability really shines when there are others at his location, whether it's investigators or monsters. His two abilities compliment each other, and his high Stamina makes Protect less of a risk, but still not an overly used ability since the majority of the time, investigators don't end up in the same space. But his Fearless ability I think is his "big deal". Sometimes the way the monsters move, a street area can get crowded with monsters, making it very difficult to maneuver through. Sid can go in and take the strongest monsters out first to receive the bonus from the others, and leaving the weaker monsters for last since he's less likely to need a bonus for them.

Isabel works well with Sid since she can move the monsters around to give him the bonuses, but even if Sid isn't around, her ability doesn't lose its usefulness, since she can get monsters out of the way for weaker investigators to have safer travels. I had originally had the ability not limited to neighborhoods, but it seemed very overpowered being able to manipulate the monsters in all of Arkham. Likewise, I had her able to move an investigator instead of a monster as well, but again, this seemed too powerful. One of the things I'm considering however is to drop her Will to 4 to increase another. My reasoning is that if she were to get an Ally or Skill that increases Will, then her ability could pretty much move anything even if her Will isn't maxed out. I'm trying to avoid having he make a Will check, since I'm not fond of checks made for an investigator's ability to work. So I'd be interested to hear what people think of her.

I'll post the others a little later (I currently have 12 as we were working on our own custom expansion).

DeepSix said:

I love this idea with the multiple personalities. It's very unique.

pittplayer said:

1. I wasn't aware that was movie art. What movie is it from??

2. I have updated your character but changed the first ability a little bit. I'll change it up again if you don't like it.

Here is the new version. I wanted the picture to be a dark and mysterious looking guy and that picture fits pretty well i think.

Cimmerz said:

I like this idea but I think you could get away with her being able to move any monster that is adjacent to her location, so she could end movement in a street area next to another street area and move a monster there. That way she can use her ability proactively and not have to wait until a monster happens to move into a neighborhood she is located in.

ivory_tower said:

Yeah, I see what you're saying now. I updated it, though I'm not sure the wording is very good, since the rules differentiate locations and street areas, so I wanted to make sure that both apply to both her position and the monster's.

How about.

Movement Phase: Isabel may spend 2 movement points to move any Monster in any street adjacent to Isabel's location up to 2 spaces.

I reorganized my Bill Cutting character to fit him into the game world a little better. Does this guy look too powerful?

And what about this for an Ability?

Midnight Ritual:

Any Phase: Activate this ability and draw 1 Corruption card to Remove X creatures from the Outskirts where X is equal to the number of Corruption Cards <name> has.

paired with

Any Phase: <name> may gain 1 Sanity when traveling to other worlds and 1 Stamina when returning to Arkham.

ivory_tower said:

You could make critical hit into a card(skill?), and save some space on the character sheet. Then you could charge him for the cost of the card, and it'll balance out a little better.

Also, Can i get some .eon files from you Ivory? I'd like to print some of your characters out and add them to the next big games mix.

Cimmerz said:

Isabel is real cool. Great art too.

I tried making characters that were ment to work together, but the "sharing a space" thing does not work out very well. Try making his ability effect the area (all the same color) instead.

DeepSix said:

Good idea with the skill card. I will look into that. Here are some of my characters, not sure which ones you wanted.

Here are two Characters that I have not posted yet and I think still need some tweaking. I would appreciate some input back if you get to play these and let me know how they pan out.

www.thefourseasonsboutique.com/pictures/arkham/Hannah.eon

www.thefourseasonsboutique.com/pictures/arkham/David.eon

and here are the others

www.thefourseasonsboutique.com/pictures/arkham/Chester.eon

www.thefourseasonsboutique.com/pictures/arkham/Walter.eon

www.thefourseasonsboutique.com/pictures/arkham/Edgar.eon

www.thefourseasonsboutique.com/pictures/arkham/Herbert.eon

www.thefourseasonsboutique.com/pictures/arkham/Marian.eon

www.thefourseasonsboutique.com/pictures/arkham/Randolph.eon

www.thefourseasonsboutique.com/pictures/arkham/Sophia.eon

@ Cimmerz

Both characters seem reasonably balanced (I thought about each of them for a minute and don't see how either could be used in a game dynamic violating manner). One suggestion though, the taking stamina damage for another investigator skill is fairly weak (it probably would hardly ever be used). Maybe make it work by neighborhood (I think someone might've already suggested that actually)?

Avi_dreader said:

I'm not clear on why you say he needs to be modified. Just because being arrested is more common? And the reason he is devoured when arrested is because he's been murdering people, which I'm sure would piss off the people of Innsmouth just like anyone else. They don't want some outsider coming in and killing their neighbors (or hookers!). If he gets arrested they're not letting him out. With most investigators arrest is just a hassle tactic where you're kept overnight or whatever. With Jack it's the end of the line because he's a dangerous criminal.

@ivorytower

that pic is from Van Helsing

nice update on Walter!! Thanks

P.S. i hope u make more HPL influenced characters!

Cimmerz said:

Sid is great. I like both the abilities, and for once I feel obliged to nitpick the way it's worded! You say you've been working on these for a while, and it shows. Good work sir. One thing though: four common items is a bit dull. There's a good chance he'd draw a weapon which would make the .45 irrelevent. And if he doesn't, then it probably means he's got three pieces of tat like a cigarette case and a hip flask and a crisp packet full of drawing pins and whatever other rubbish is clogging up the common item deck these days. Give him a unique and a spell; adds variety.

Two words about Isabel 's ability: simple r and more powerful. (Ok, yes, that's three words, or four if you count the 'and'.) Cut the movement point cost, cut the restrictions on fliers/immobiles, and cut the Will limit. The wording I'd go for would be this:

"Mythos phase: Each non-spawn monster in Isabel's neighbourhood is treated as having the monster movement type of her choice. When a monster in Isabel's neighbourhood would move on the black or white path, she may have it move on the other path instead. She may not cause non-blue-bordered monsters to move to the sky."

That just about fits in the box, I think. Basically, she has almost total control of monster movement in her neighbourhood. It even makes a bit of thematic sense; her voice charms some monsters, repels others, drives a few creatures berserk, and drowns out those pesky Songs of G'harne that Cthonians sing, thus preventing the earthquakes. Actually getting real use out of her ability will require the investigators to 'deploy her' quite carefully. If all else fails, she can just make everything 'yellow-bordered' and keep it all where it is. It can't work on Spawn though, or she could start messing about with the Dunwich Horror (and other problems might crop up too).

(It is a tricky ability to phrase elegantly; whichever way you try to say it, there are 'cracks' which create odd effects, although none of them are seriously game-breaking. For example, that last part about not causing non-flyers to move to the sky is very clumsy wording, since technically if she's changing their movement type they ARE flying monsters, temporarily, so you'd be relying on the players' common sense to realize how the rule would obviously work . Isabel could also camp in Dunwich for the whole game and almost certainly prevent the Horror from rising, but the **** thing hardly ever rises anyway.)

@ivorytower

on Walter do you mean discard all allies on a 1?

the allies are still to overpowered a little you can just sit in the graveyard all game and PIMP your character, the corruptions do balance a little but i think it should still have the can only use ablility if no allies rule.

@ivorytower or any one else who is interested!

How bout we make a All Eldrich Team of H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and Robert E. Howard investigators?? sweet!

pittplayer said:

I was thinking all allies to even out the ability to draw allies in the first place. So, drawing an Ally has 2 consequences, the corruption card and a chance to lose them and be stuck with the corruption card. I was also thinking maybe he could trade in 3 corruption cards for a ruination card? I will update the character for you however you want it, since you will be using it.

And I finally read "The Festival" Here is what I came up with for that Story. The picture fits well, I think. I picked the second ability because if you remember, it was flying beasts that showed up to carry them to the other side. Shouldn't be too powerful, can't use it all the time and his other ability is useful by itself. The wording needs some help. Any takers? Corinthian?

@ivorytower

i still have to go with search for any ally, gain corruption(good idea), lose him on a 1 or 2, and can only use abilty if he has no allies!

Love your yulerite cultist!! lol the mounting ability is genus my friend! if you remember in the story he had the necronomicon i would start him with that

power over the beast:

Movement: When David ends his movement in a location containing a flying monster, he may automaticaly evade all monsters in that location and gain 4 movement points to be used immmediately.

or something like that!