What do you mean in Packrat when you say he receives a "speed -1" Does he get one less movement (or -1 to speed checks) and does that happen when he is knocked out/insane or all the time?

Wheelin and Dealing: can this happen anywhere or only when at the shops?

Theoretically, I like him though. Black markets are always there after all.

Lord of Squirrels said:

I was thinking that he gets 1 less movement and 1 less to speed checks. I put this to off balance being able to keep some of his items. And he can only sell common and unique to the general store or curiostite shop. Any tips for improvement or is he ok as is? thanks for you response.

What are some other game elements that really erk people, because I think those elements are great inspiration for abilities to circumvent them; to a certain degree.

ivory_tower said:

Re: Edmund Ward.

I agree with Lord of Squirrels about a black-market-themed investigator being cool, but I don't think you've quite nailed it yet. It seems like Edmund's abilities achieve the opposite of what the character is all about. Edmund doesn't have any way of actually gaining extra items. He can hold on to them a bit more easily than other invesitgators can, but that's a very slight ability, especially in these days of injury/madness cards. In terms of item-handling, all Edmund really has is:

a) a penalty for carrying a lot of items, which is a penalty that other investigators don't have, and

b) a way of getting rid of items so he's actually less likely to end up carrying a lot of useless items anyway.

I think that selling useless items probably isn't efficient enough for you to ever actually want to do it. You've tacked on not one but two 'qualifiers' which make the ability far too weak for it to be worth an investigator's time: firstly, the only investigator who can sell items is the one who can't carry many items or he starts slowing down, and secondly, he's only selling them for half price.

So for what it's worth, here's what I think you'd need to do to make him work:

- Starting location: General Store. So that he can sell things on turn one , when he's not likely to have anything else urgent to do.

- Starting items: no money at all, 4 clues, 2 random commons and 2 random uniques. Something like that, anyway.

- First special ability: "<b>Arkham Encounter phase:</b> Instead of having an encounter at General Store or Curiosity Shoppe, <name> may discard up to three items. For each item discarded, <name> gains X dollars, where X is that item's list price. If an item has no list price, it cannot be discarded this way." (You could even omit the last sentence of that, because in a way it's self-evident; no list price means no dollar amount. It depends how short of space you are on the card).

- Second special ability: "<b>Any phase:</b> <name> never discards more than 1 item when <i>unconscious</i> or <i>insane</i>." (This is almost equivalent to the 'one quarter' thing anyway, and it's a bit less arithmetical, if you see what I mean.)

And that ought to do it... Edmund is "the guy who sells things" and you don't need to complicate it any more than that. You don't need the speed penalty.

(Also: maybe I'm going mad here, but shouldn't the ability be called Pack MULE not Pack RAT? I think a pack rat means a rat which runs with a group of other rats and conforms. A pack mule is a mule that carries a load of packs of stuff....)

thecorinthian said:

Thank you for the input. I like what you've done to fix him. The reason I made it so he only got half the price was because, turn after turn, you could just cycle through the deck until you got to an elder sign or whatever you were looking for. I think that is a little too strong for an ability? I will playtest him today with your new updates and see what happens.

Feonor said:

i fail to see the connection

Hello again! I've been working on stuff but haven't finished anything up until recently. Here are four new investigators that I've come up with, and am thinking I'll use in my custom expansion. I've tried to capture the flavor of the 1920's with these folks.

I hope you can read these. I never know if SE is going to spit out two images or a single, joined image.

Lola lists as unabalanced in SE because I gave her +1 focus due to her ability being not too over the top.

I think the character with the biggest issue here is Arnold. I thought about managing his ability with a special card that he would flip to one side or the other when he determined his destiny. As always, suggestions/constructive criticism is welcome! Thanks!

P.S., here is a link to my card storage, if you're interested in the back stories or anything.

Lola

1) I'd change her name. Since there's already a character in the game named Lola. It's just easier to keep up with that way. But hey, that's just a preference I guess.

2) If you keep that ability, which can be quite a good one, I'd at least word it so that it only applies to her, and not all investigators. Something like "Explored markers are never discared from Lola....".

3) I'd limit her ability at least somewhat. As it could fiddly keeping up with what gates she has explored. Maybe make it so she can only explore a limited amount before she must discard one? Or maybe make it no discard unless she enters another gate. I'm not sure. I just know I wouldn't want to have to keep up with all that on top of all the things we already have to keep up with.

Edgar

Edgar is an interesting character... I'm just not sure how useful he is. If given the chance to search for a Task or Mission instead of taking a Unique item, I'd take the Unique item, but then again, there are few tasks or missions I actively try to achieve. Others may play different though, so I'm only speaking from my personal play style. I do like the theme of this character though. Okay, after typing out everything else, I just had a thought. Instead of letting him search the deck instead of drawing an item, why not make it so that he searches the deck for the first Task each time the Terror level increaes, and a Mission each time the Doom track increases (pre Ancient One awakening of course). This makes it so that people actually get the tasks and missions (as opposed to opting for the item instead). They may not achieve them, but they at least draw them. I don't know, that just occured to me.

Oscar

Oscar seems very overpowered, but then again, some of the new Innsmouth characters do too! Not having to worry about Sanity cost for spells pretty much makes all other spell casters in the game look shabby. Not to mention he starts with Flesh Ward with his low Stamina. I get where you're trying to go with the character. I'm just not sure what I'd change without stepping on the toes of other preexisting investigators.

Arnold

Arnold is tricky. For one, it's almost a given to cast Bless your very first turn to have someone blessed AND gain the extra spells/skills. This is especially true if you choose to cast it on himself, since the Terror track won't be raised yet. And since you can do that your first turn, he's basically starting with some incredibly good stuff.

Just gotta say though, I'm not an expert on anything, so my opinion is just my opinion. Of those 4, the one I like the most, is the one I'd probably use the least (and that's Edgar).

ivory_tower said:

That might be a problem, but it takes a while... you can draw three uniques, and if you don't get one you want, you have to stay where you are next turn and spend a whole encounter selling the unwanted item back, then the turn after that you get three more uniques, and so on. Obviously it lets you 'extend' a shopping trip without worrying about running out of money, but it's still a very slow process.

I suppose it depends on the group's playing style, but in my neck of the woods, that'd be a very bad way to spend your time. Doing absolutely nothing for three or four turns, just in order to get an Elder Sign, is not that good a trade-off. If you went to the shop looking for any old magic weapon, the fact that you didn't waste any dollars before you found one would be small consolation for the fact that you were sitting around shopping for several turns while everyone else had to deal with gates and monsters. Time is money, people.

If I was actually using this investigator, I'd wander round Arkham in the early game, opportunistically taking useless items off other investigators, then sell the whole lot all at once for a staggering sum, share out some of the money, and get everyone to go on a quick shopping spree, in the hope that things wouldn't get too out-of-control in the intervening time. I really don't know how helpful this investigator would really be in this situation. It probably needs testing.

@ Deathasarus Rex: I think Feonor was making fun of your self-insertion into the game, ala Mary Sue characters in fanfic... I wouldn't worry about it, though...

@ Admiral142: I'll post some feedback on those guys in a bit, but I can tell you right now that I think Arnold Collins is going to need some work...

@ Cimmerz: Those are great suggestions! I'll look at ways to integrate that. I especially like your suggestion for Edgar. I thought there might be a Lola, but I didn't double check. I will change that. Also, for her ability, maybe use a bast token or something, since there's a million of them and I don't think a lot of people use bast... I'll think about that also. Thanks so much for the feedback; much appreciated!

@Corinthian: I'm looking forward to it! I agree, Arnold is my thorn right now. I knew posting him would get some good ideas though, and I'm excited to see what people come up with. Cimmerz had some great ideas, too!

Ok, so here are the latest investigators I've been working on. I appreciate any comments (both positive and negative).

Raja's Chakra ability is basically the counterpart to Sid's Protect ability (another investigator I made). It's dependent on neighborhood, so it's usefulness may vary, but because it's much easier to lose Sanity throughout the game than Stamina (generally speaking that is), I think hers has a little more use than Sid's. Her Karma ability basically lets her get stronger as things seem to get worse for the investigators.

Sherman Willard was a tough one to create due to his abilities being what came to mind first. Then the Hermit story came to me, with the Young Zoog as his only companion (which gives him a +1 to Lore, Speed and Will). This helps his stats somewhat. His abilities pretty much make him being removed from the game not a complete failure (and sometimes a benefit). But because he must be devoured for his ability to kick in, I gave him an extra Focus point. I haven't tested him to see if he needs more though.

Carmen is basically the Ally generator. Generally speaking, allies aren't easy to come by (though there can be exceptions), and using the Ma's Boarding House ability can sometimes seem like a waste when you can spend your gate and monster trophies elsewehere. I didn't want to lower the amount of trophies Carmen could buy them with (due to that being an ability already), so instead, I gave her an alternative method. Trading them just goes with her theme, but also gives her a little something extra.

Rufus was designed to get across Arkham quickly, even though he only has a max speed of 3. In large group games, this gives him many options of where to go, but he may lack a little in smaller groups, and even down right suck in two player games. This is one of the reasons I gave him an extra movement point for Evading monsters, and his Sneak allows him to do this pretty well.

And lastly, Olivia is designed to be a spellcaster, but because spell casting can be so risky when it comes to Sanity loss, it's tough to make players want to play a spell caster. But Olivia does two things to help eliminate this. By using other's Sanity, she can continue casting spells even when she's low on Sanity. By letting others use her Sanity, investigators that could be great spellcasters but lack the Sanity are now able to be just that.

Ok, here goes:

@Admiral142:

Lola Johnson is a nice simple one, and it's good to see someone tinkering with Explored markers (since they're a part of the game that it's hard to do much with). The ability might need a bit more clarification, though. Is the idea that she can leave the Explored marker on the gate, wander off, come back, and try to close the gate again in a later turn? If so, you might think about specifying that she's not drawn back through the gate when she returns to the location, because the ordinary rules for Explored markers won't handle that (since you're not meant to be able to keep those markers anyway). You could solve the problem by giving the character a secondary ability: she's never drawn through gates unless she chooses to allow it, maybe.

Edgar Fuller: Tasks completed by Edgar are returned to the deck - does that mean they're discarded, or shuffled back into the deck? Just discarding them isn't really an advantage, because Edgar would have to work his way through every other mission or task that was above them in the deck in order to get the same one again. Is this ability meant to be make it possible to do the same task/mission multiple times? If so, you could probably do it more directly - just include a second ability that he doesn't return Tasks to the box at all; he just cleans all the tokens off them and can do them again. I think most of the Tasks are low-level stuff which it doesn't matter much if it's repeated. Missions, on the other hand, he probably oughtn't to be able to easily repeat - some of them are epic-level stuff, like Sealing The Beast's Power.

Oscar Zoroaster: Not bad, not bad at all... spellcasting characters are always tricky. This guy might be overpowered - the Librarian is probably already the game's best spellcaster, and she only has a sanity loss reduction of 1. I assume that Flesh Ward is intended to be a way of helping Oscar cope with having very low Stamina - but I think he needs to have a serious disadvantage like that, to make up for how powerful he'll be if he gets hold of Dread Curse of Azathoth or somthing like it. So you could help him a bit less directly - give him a fixed 'Mists of Releh' instead. Alternatively, you could scrap the fixed items and simply give him three random spells and not a lot of money. That wouldn't be a bad concept for the character: he's got great Lore, and a very handy ability, but the challenge is to get hold of the right spells.

Arnold Colli ns confuses me. Don't take this the wrong way, but what is the idea meant to be? It seems like he's basically a guy with a really complex way of determining his fixed items - and he'd have too many fixed items for my tastes either way. The 'Destinies' thing clearly needs to be a special card, and if it's going to be anything other than a one-off 'item bundle', it probably needs to do something of its own and have the ability to be flipped over by in-game effects. Since it's indirectly bringing you Third Eye and Inner Beast, I say cut out the middleman and have a double-sided card which raises Max Stam and lowers Max San on one side, and does the opposite on the other side, in addition to some other item-type effect (one side functions as a weapon, the other side as a defensive spell, something like that). It really depends what you were going for.

@Cimmerz:

First of all, great work on all the art.

Raja Patil: Presumably she's only meant to be able to spend Doom tokens as if they were 'one toughness' trophies - you probably need to specify that. Otherwise, I can't fault her.

Sherman Willard: Kinda weird. It seems like the only time he's special is when you get him killed... I think he needs something else special that he actually does while he's alive. How about.... reversing his second ability, and calling it 'Scavenger' or 'Rag and Bone Man' or something - so instead of leaving all his possessions to other investigators, he can gain one item which is discarded whenever another investigator goes mad or is unconscious or is devoured? It wouldn't make much 'theme' sense (since it'd be 'action at a distance') but that shouldn't necessarily stop you. Hmmm, actually that may be a bit crap. I'll think about it some more.

Carmen Roy : I love Allies. I'll swear by 'em. I love characters who interact with Allies and there aren't enough of them. Unfortunately, the upshot of this is that people like me (who have an unnatural love for Allies) shouldn't ever be allowed to have an investigator like Carmen Roy. Five dollars is too cheap for most Allies, even if you couldn't give them to other people. It should just be 'half price' - five toughness of trophies or one gate trophy. And even then, it might be too good. Also, minor notes: giving Allies to other investigators should be one ability; buying Allies cheap should be another. And Carmen probably shouldn't start with a random Ally, since she's going to be up to her neck in Allies anyway. Give her a few Clue tokens instead, I think.

I'll look at the other investigators in a bit; right now I'm off to vote. Yay democracy.

Here we go, I made some of the changes and think that these might work a little better. Let me know what you think! I'm also working on a special card for Arnold, and when I get him working, I'll put up the new version.

Thanks for the input so far, keep it coming!

@thecorinthian

Yes, Raja was a slip. I had exported her image, and actually corrected it, but never re-exported it. It's fixed now.

About Carmen, i didn't make it half price, as this was already a skill in the game (Charismatic), so instead opted for an alternative method of gaining them. Although, I made THAT half price (according to Strange Eons anyway). Since half price for an Ally would be 5 toughness of monsters, Strange Eons has them with a price of $1 per toughness, I figured $5 wouldn't be too cheap. Then again, I guess Strange Eons doesn't take into account an investigator's abilities with it's calculations. So, maybe she can pay $7? Not quite half price, but not full price either. As for separating the skills, that was another oversight. When I figure out what to do with her gaining allies, I'll reupload with the fix.

About Sherman, I'm open to suggestions, but having an investigator that when devoured didn't really mean a loss of progress, was my intentions, and allowing an alternative that would still lose all items, but gaining ground on the doom track instead.

I'm looking forward to what you have to say about Rufus and Olivia! Thanks for the input so far.

@Admiral142

Edgar is much better.

I'm still not sure about Oscar. True Mage should be a powerful ability on the spell casting side, but not so powerful that it makes others look bad. RIght now he's got half of Daisy's ability, which is a good ability for casting spells, but doesn't make him stand out. His second ability is pretty good, but I wouldn't make him sacrifice anything to get the new spell. Luke who is an official character, gets a free clue when he enters an Other World, and he doesn't have to give up anything for it (and that's on top of his unloseable Gate Box). And in the grand sceme of the game, Clues are more valuable than spells. Sure, he may get a really powerful spell this way, but he may also get a few duds. Not to mention the spell deck is rather large. So I wouldn't make him sacrifice a spell, and just let him draw one. On the whole though, I think it's an improvement and more balanced character.

My first attempt at custom investigators. Enjoy.

http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/6196/daphneblakefrontside.png
http://img192.imageshack.us/img192/2034/fredjonesfrontside.png
http://img190.imageshack.us/img190/8836/mysterymachinefrontside.png
http://img41.imageshack.us/img41/4425/norvilleshaggyrogersfro.png
http://img38.imageshack.us/img38/570/scoobydoofrontside.png
http://img37.imageshack.us/img37/663/scoobysnacksfrontside.png
http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/1307/velmadinkleyfrontside.png

*Whinges* Can't you add the images to the post directly? I don't wanna open eight new browser tabs!

@Cimmerz: I like Rufus , but as usual I have one or two quibbles. 'Teleporting Baton' should be called something else! Because otherwise it seems daft that it's not a fixed item. The ability itself is fine, but you probably don't need to specify that he can do it any number of times per turn - that seems self-evident to me. Then again, there's no harm in leaving it in there if you think people might not realize.

The evade check thing needs to be a seperate ability - just call it 'Nimble' or something. There's only one problem with it, that I can see: Evading monsters can also happen when you end your movement in the same street or location, not just when you're moving on to somewhere else, so Rufus' ability creates an odd effect, whereby you could 'end' your movement phase and then not really have ended it, because you could use the extra movement point to move to an adjacent place where there's another monster, and then evade that, and get another point, and so on. I like the idea of Rufus dancing along the whole length of the board because there are monsters everywhere, but it does create ambiguity about what exactly the 'end' of his movement phase is.

The way to solve this, I reckon, is to make the ability simpler and more powerful: "Movement: Rufus may fight or evade monsters at any point during his movement, rather than just when it ends or when he moves off his current street or location."

Here's the big thing though: I think that either of this abilities is good enough to be an investigator's only ability, so if you're going to use my suggestions, you probably need to split Rufus into two people! If you want him to have them both, you've got to nerf one of the abilities. The 'teleporting' one is very very good anyway, so it should probably cost him his entire movement to teleport, rather than just one point. That makes it less exploitable in terms of trading items all over the place. (Two of my regular group players are sitting nearby eating lunch, incidentally, and they agree that Rufus might be too good).

You've given me a good idea for another investigator though, so I may post one of my own soon.

As for Olivia the Gypsy: Good idea again. I'd split it into two seperate abilities again though, just so it's all written out longhand and there's no possibility of confusion.

First ability: "Any phase: Whenever another investigator pays the Sanity cost of a spell, you may have Olivia pay the Sanity cost instead. If this causes Olivia to be driven insane, the other investigator is also driven insane."

Second ability: "Any phase: Whenever Olivia pays the Sanity cost of a spell, you may have another investigator pay the Sanity cost instead. If this causes the other investigator to be driven insane, Olivia is also driven insane."

If you want to restrict it more, you could make it only work between investigators in Arkham, since it's presumably meant to be some sort of psychic thing and the Other Worlds might be beyond her psychic reach. Also, don't called it Sanity Syphon. That sounds like the name of a pretentious metal band.

OK. I'll try to post the images directly. I hope this works.

Allright, that didn't work. One more try.

I wouldn't bother messing about with standard tags. This forum was designed by the Great Race. They know nothing of this human thing you call 'logic'.

Like all problems, this one can be easily explained away through the medium of MSPaint.

That's how it works at my end, anyway. It might depend on your internet browser. You might have to tell it to allow pop-ups.

The irony is that I had to open way more than eight new browser tabs in order to create, upload and post images which show you how to post images so that I don't have open eight new browser tabs.

More new investigators in a bit. I'm doing an investigator who's a clown. Stay tuned.

Man... it took me around an hour to figure that out on my own. I wish you'd posted this back then. I think we need to make your post a sticky on this board.

Dethasarus Rex said:

Seriously?

tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SelfInsertFic

No offense, man. I'm jus sayin'

Two more for your consideration.

This is Lindsay Maskull , and before anyone comments, please bear in mind that she is not meant to have Focus 4 . Her special ability (if used right) is so good that I tried to nerf her in all the other possible ways, but I couldn't get Strange Eons to do what I wanted. So really she's meant to have Luck 1-4 and Focus 2, but I haven't worked out how to make Strange Eons do it yet. It keeps insisting on giving her bonus things.

Even if I manage to make her completely weedy in terms of stats/skills, I think this special ability set might still be too powerful. Any thoughts? I could cut the second ability, and just make her only be able to astral-project while in Arkham.

This is Augustus Puck .

I really can't decide if 'Anarchy' is a rubbish ability or an overpowered one. If the investigator group won't cooperate properly then obviously Augustus could be really annoying, because he can basically decide who goes first every turn, which is more 'power' than one investigator usually has over the others. On the other hand, I don't care much about this; it is a pretty cool ability and it does allow for some nice tactical stuff, and if the players can't manage group decision making, they're playing the wrong game, or at least using the wrong investigator in this case.

(One random question tho: I don't have Innsmouth yet, but I understand that the Quachil Uttaus AO does something odd with the First Player marker. Would Augustus Puck 'break' this effect? In other words, is he compatible with that AO, or would he cause it to be impossible / too easy?)

Lindsay

Is this what you were trying to do?

Her Projection is wicked. I'm not sure if it's too powerful to rid the Transference ability though, since generally speaking, more investigators are in Arkham than in an OW at any given time. This is all speculation on the "on paper" stance though. I'll have to play with her and see how it works out. It might be more of a problem in larger player games, whereas smaller player games, it's probably not going to make any difference at all.

Puck

I like Anarchy too. It certainly adds a new dynamic. Regarding Quachil Attaus. The rulebook specifically states that the first player marker is never passed until the first player is devoured. Throughout the game, each turn he forces the first player to either pay 2 clue tokens or draw a card. All but 1 (out of 12) of those cards instruct you to not pass first player marker, with the other instructing you to pass it to the left. So, it could cause some confusion. Perhaps adding a simple "unless a first player is specifically designated by the game....." followed by what you have already. Then of course, against Quachil Attaus, he's pretty much lost his specialty, but then again that's only one AO.

I think in the hands of a skilled tactician the fool's power would be very useful. It's one of those that could be used every turn or not show up at all in a single game. I don't have Innsmouth either, so can't really judge it against the new AOs.

@Feonor: I just got sucked into that website for over an hour. Holy crap.

The Quachill Uttaus cards all say "Do not pass the first player marker". So if you reword Augustus, it shouldn't be a problem.

For example, like this:

"Mythos Phase: When the First Player Marker is passed, Ausgustus chooses to whom it is passed". His power will then be useless if Quachill Uttaus is AO, but that's the lot of the fool in life.