Custom Investigators

By Morgaln, in Fan Creations

It looks like you're trying to make a combat monkey. If that's the case, I would highly reccomend increasing his sanity. Sanity is actually the thing most investigators lose over Stamina (at least in my experience) because you set your fight high when you're planning on fighting monsters, thus your Will suffers. Also, I would increase his Will. That will also make it less likely that he'll go insane, which would prevent him from ever getting to make that big dice roll to take the monster out. His focus is nice, but he doesn't necessarily need 2 focus. You could use the point to bump up his sneak maybe. I haven't read the Azrael comics in a while (I have the first few issues somewhere), but isn't he similar to Batman in that he's at least somewhat stealthy? At least until he pops those flaming punch daggers. I love that version, with the punch daggers. He looks awesome.

Some other suggestions you're likely to hear are that he has too many fixed posessions. You want to give characters a minimum of fixed posessions. If you take a look at the investigators from the game, they usually don't have any other fixed posessions besides money and clues.

Finally, the character is highly unbalanced because of the Flaming Sword. Not only is the item over the top, but it doesn't look like you're factoring that $9 into the purchasing of his equipment. I could be wrong about that, but either way, the sword is much too powerful. The shotgun is the comparable weapon, and I'd base your sword of that. The Shotgun is $6 and adds +4 with 6's doubled and using 2 hands. You might see if you could balance the sword a little more by making it $9 (same) and +5 with 6's double and using 2 hands. Another thought would be to not make it an item at all, but the reward for a personal story. That way no one else could draw it and purchase it.

If you do that, you might also want to change Azrael's ability to something like "Any phase: When Azrael damages a monster, place a stamina token on that monster. If there are ever as many stamina counters on a monster as that monster has toughness, the monster is defeated. These markers are not removed at the end of the round." Or something like that. This is meant to reflect that the damage Azrael causes is also fire damage, and so monsters can't regenerate it. In the normal rules, monsters regenerate any damage at the end of each round, which sucks if you just barely miss killing something nasty like a child of Abhoth.

Anyway, these are just suggestions from someone who has been taught by the many mad voices echoing through the forum. :)

Thanks, that is exactly what I needed.

He is a combat monkey, but he is tilted towards going insane as he does quite a few times :)
The sword is priced in, but is too over the top. So I have taken your 2nd suggestion.

As for rewards for stories, I have yet to play Innsmouth, so I have not read up on those.
Although it does sound like a solution.

Hello there. I've made a few novelty and personal Investigators (friends, etc.), but I think I'd like to try my hand at making a few more serious ones... Before I fire up Strange Eons again, though, I thought I'd try to work out a few possible ideas for special abilities and ask for some input. I skimmed through some of the pages here and one thing I recall is someone saying that a good source of special abilities for Investigators is to find some element of the game that you find lacking or in need of a boost and create something to work with that. So some of these ideas are with that in mind. Any suggestions for items or skills or other abilities to complement these ideas are also welcome...

1. An ability to move into the Outskirts and fight monsters there. It would probably involve moving to and from the Outskirts via a specific location (e.g. The Woods), and there would probably have to be some limit on it, so that person couldn't just clean out the Outskirts too easily. Perhaps you can only fight one monster in the Outskirts each turn (the Outskirts represents a big area, after all), or only one on the first turn you move there, and then two per turn after that. But I think this would be a nice ability for a character who likes to adventure and explore out of town. This would best fit with a GOO or scenario where the Outskirts are likely to fill up and the Terror Track becomes a big issue.

2. An ability to change the dimensional symbol on monsters, or on a single monster, once per turn , and/or the ability to change or exchange dimensional symbols on Mythos cards, or the light/dark of them (e.g. instead of Plus goes white and Moon goes black, it's the opposite, or one symbol from white is exchanged with one from black). This was used for a card for a friend of mine, who is into miniature painting, so the ability read that he could paint over (change) the dimensional symbol of one monster, at any time, once per turn (and the monster would revert back to its normal symbol at the start of the next turn). The reason for this ability is that sometimes when I'm playing a game with Innsmouth or Kingsport, and I really need to get to that town, there ends up being one really nasty monster in the Northside streets, blocking off the Train Station. I try to fight it with a few different people but get knocked unconscious or insane, and it just seems to take forever to draw the right Mythos card that will move it out of the way. I think a nice companion ability for this might be something where the character gains one Clue token each time a monster moves into his/her location, which would give some incentive to do that using the other ability. I had thought of doing a character for Leon Theramin, and this kind of ability might be good for him, as if the frequencies of his theramin interfere with or control the monster movement abilities.

3. A fighter pilot with a plane to attack Sky monsters (and also perhaps attack other monsters from the sky). This is the 1920's after all, so surely a WWI flying ace might be in Arkham. Questions for this would include where the plane takes off from and lands, what it's attack strength and movement would be, would it need gasoline and require money to use, etc.

4. Upkeep: If in an Other World location, gain 1 Clue token and lose 1 Sanity (or 1 Stamina, or 1 or the other). So this would be a gate runner character, but one thing that can be frustrating is when you go through a gate with 5-6 Clues and something weird happens to make you lose or spend 1-2 Clues and now you can't seal it when you get out. This would help prevent that, and also give you a chance of entering with only 3 Clues and ending up with enough to seal. But I think the penalty is pretty good because it means that you can't just run into a gate without a decent amount of Sanity (which, of course, you might lose more of with in the Other World). An obvious balance for this ability would be to give this person only 3 or 4 Sanity to begin with.

5. An H.G. Wells character, with two main abilities; The Invisible Man and The Time Machine. The Invisible Man would allow H.G. to move freely without making any Evade checks, but would cost Sanity to use. The Time Machine would also cost Sanity and allow some kind of re-roll or re-draw ability.

"A fighter pilot with a plane to attack Sky monsters (and also perhaps attack other monsters from the sky). This is the 1920's after all, so surely a WWI flying ace might be in Arkham. Questions for this would include where the plane takes off from and lands, what it's attack strength and movement would be, would it need gasoline and require money to use, etc."

Arkham-Horror-map.jpg

I have zero piloting experience but Arkham looks somewhat landing-friendly. Create a "Biplane fighter token" that can only be used by the fighter pilot to move from street locations to the Sky and back. He may pay 2 movement points to move from a street location to the Sky and visa versa. He can only enter locations or move to a street location if he disembarks (leaving the Biplane fighter token on his current street location).

Also when flying monsters in street locations move, they move to and attack the pilot if he's in the sky (he may make Evade checks). Give him skill check bonuses against flying monsters when he's in his plane, whether he's fighting them in the streets or the sky. If he's knocked unconscious or driven insane while he's flying his plane in the Sky, he loses the plane for the rest of the game.* He fails his personal story if he loses his plane, but he passes if he defeats a number of monsters.

*If the pilot fails a combat check against a Nightgaunt while he's in the sky, he loses his plane.

I'm wondering how you would edit the skill sliders in strange eons to not be restricted. For instance I wish to make a skill slider like such

Fight: 1/2/3/4 /5

Will: 4/3/2/1 /0

Essentially I'm looking for the effect of Permanently losing a focus to unlock an additional slide on an otherwise rounded character. In a similar way the the character could lose 1 health and stamina to permanently decrease their health and increase their stamina 1, or vice versa.

Wondering if this would be too powerful or not but it would seem fun. Especially with the flavor of the character having amnesia, and losing your focus, health or stamina, would be like remembering something they had lost. At least I think it would be fun. any suggestions on this type of character?

Sorry, I'm new here. I had some fun using strange eons, and so I wished to show you some of my creations, but whenever trying to use Export, the images are not foud in the file created. Any suggestion?

Adventurer said:

Sorry, I'm new here. I had some fun using strange eons, and so I wished to show you some of my creations, but whenever trying to use Export, the images are not foud in the file created. Any suggestion?

Take screenshots and post those. Or copy/paste the part of the image you want to show into another application for images.

SE creates zip files (I kind of wish it wouldn't, sometimes), so you'll have to unzip that file first, and then the PNG or JPG should be there.

Thanks to everyone. I'm very sorry for my poor English, but let's give a try:


Elza-Botany-Front-Face.png?t=1265061626


Elza-Botany-Back-Face.png?t=1265061578


Elza-Botany-Background.png?t=1265061751

Oooopppps, here comes the missing part:

Elza-Botany-Back2.png?t=1265062011

i know the "Humanoid enemy" concept is a weak one, but the alternative was to create a list of drainable enemies, an this was going to be long:

Cultists, Maniacs, Whitches, Warlocks, High Priests, Dark Druids, Tcho-tcho (?) and others. Any suggestion?

By the wai, Elza is forbidden to carry a Bible: this references a card created for another character:

Holy-Bible-Front-Face.png?t=1265229484

And here is the Investigator:

Thomas-Farrel-Front-Face.png?t=126522954

Thomas-Farrel-Back-Face.png?t=1265229574

Thomas-Farrelb.png?t=1265229604

hahahaha....the bible does the same thing that whiskey does! partido_risa.gif

A suggestion on the personal story card, call the failure "Valley of the Shadow of Death" if that fits.

As for the humanoid monster thing perhaps change to crescent monsters? Doesn't cover everything but comes closest without having to establish a new in game precedent.

Veet said:

hahahaha....the bible does the same thing that whiskey does! partido_risa.gif

Yes ;'D if you drink your Bible, you won't go insane.

Veet said:

As for the humanoid monster thing perhaps change to crescent monsters? Doesn't cover everything but comes closest without having to establish a new in game precedent.

Adventurer and I already tried that way, unfortunatly there are at least 4 human opponents that use a different dimensional symbol:

  • the High Priest is a cross
  • the warlock is a circle
  • the Dark druid and the OIne of the thousand are hexagons

So we left the "humanoid" definition until we can find a better one.

Veet said:

hahahaha....the bible does the same thing that whiskey does! partido_risa.gif

A suggestion on the personal story card, call the failure "Valley of the Shadow of Death" if that fits.

Wiskey??? It preserves Stamina , so you should say Food. By the way, I admit the influence of the old urban legend about the bullet-stopping Bible, in creating this card.

Not bad your suggestion; my first tidea was to use my title in latin (De Profundis), but wasn't fitting for an american preacher. I'll think about it.

As for card created for specific characters, here is another:

Note-Book-Front-Face.png?t=1265312183

And here is the character:

Michael-Smithson-Front-Face.png?t=126531

Michael-Smithson-Back-Face.png?t=1265312

MichaelSmithsonStory.png?t=1265312310

Here, another creation:

Jane-Doe-Front-Face.png?t=1265400388

Jane-Doe-Back-Face.png?t=1265400462

Jane-Doe-Story.png?t=1265401007

Hello fellow investigators,

i've been a long time lurker around here and have really admired most of the stuff you have created, so i feel it's my turn to contribute. Since i started playing AH, i've wanted to create a group of investigators based on the sadly missed HBO-show Carnivàle. Even though it's not about the Mythos, there's an atmosphere not unlike Lovecraftian novels.

Here's a couple of things i should say first :

- Since the characters are based on a TV show, i felt i had to use photos. I tried to choose some that could look like AH portraits as much as possible. If i knew how to photoshop them, it would be better. This raises also the question of copyright. It's not my intention to misuse HBO property, so there's any problem with using pics from the show, i'll remove them.

- For those who haven't seen the show, it's a must see. The characters i made out of it may spoil some of the fun though.

Anyways...this one is perhaps the character i am least satisfied with, but since it's the main character, i couldn't really start with any other. His ability doesn't spoil anything since his healing capacities are revealed in ep. 1. The deal is that whenever he uses them, the surroundings suffer a blight, hence the drawback of having a location closed.

I'll post the rest of the carnies later.

As the saying goes, constructive criticism is welcome. Oh, and i'm french, so rude comments are welcome too gui%C3%B1o.gif

Ben-Hawkins-Front-Face.jpg

Bj%2B%2Brn--Dempsey-Front-Face.png?attac

This is my first one. I just want some import, don't really know what I am doing. Love the game, wanted to spice it up a bit.

Bj%2B%2BrnDempsey-Front-Face.png?attacha

suggestion ;') you should post it so it's visible

Avi_dreader said:

suggestion ;') you should post it so it's visible

I don't understand, half the time it is there, and half the time it is not, so I tried to post it again above.

Sjursen said:

Avi_dreader said:

suggestion ;') you should post it so it's visible

I don't understand, half the time it is there, and half the time it is not, so I tried to post it again above.

Still not there. I'm not sure how you're uploading it, but you need to do it differently. Make a post asking how to upload images (I'm procrastinating on a project but I don't have enough time to explain it now, byeeeee!)

Avi_dreader said:

Sjursen said

Avi_dreader said:

suggestion ;') you should post it so it's visible

I don't understand, half the time it is there, and half the time it is not, so I tried to post it again above.

Still not there. I'm not sure how you're uploading it, but you need to do it differently. Make a post asking how to upload images (I'm procrastinating on a project but I don't have enough time to explain it now, byeeeee!)

My website kept crashing, so I went the primative way and used photobucket.

Again, any feedback would be nice.

Bjrn--Dempsey-Front-Face.png

I know the "Hunter" stock character has been already explored in more than an occasion.

However, here is my own elaboration:

Ronald-Laster.jpg?t=1267266243

Ronald-Laster-Character-Marker.jpg?t=126

RLStory.jpg?t=1267266571

Here's my first Custom Investigator. I haven't tested him out yet but I do think he's very unique. Please comment.

PS. I know the Photo is funny but I couldn't find a better one. Please tell me if you can see the images as well.