@Fourtytwo Yep. Agreed on both accounts. I will adjust, need to think of wording for the ability/attack.

At first I was shy about having too many actions, but I remember Jabba having more than two.

1 hour ago, Zcurator said:

@Fourtytwo Yep. Agreed on both accounts. I will adjust, need to think of wording for the ability/attack.

At first I was shy about having too many actions, but I remember Jabba having more than two.

If you dropped Cunning I don't think keeping Stun Gauntlets would be an issue.

It just represent him defending himself in melee.

No other character has an ability like this^ it sets him apart (he can still be attacked by melee but they suffer for it)

You may want to consider giving him more Hp as well. at the moment he is as squishy as Leia.

But that depends on how quickly he goes down in a fight.

You know it's funny, I was just thinking about how much I liked these characters and how cool it would be to use 'em in Imperial Assault, and here you've gone and written up rules for 'em. Excellent work!

1 hour ago, Castlecruncher said:

You know it's funny, I was just thinking about how much I liked these characters and how cool it would be to use 'em in Imperial Assault, and here you've gone and written up rules for 'em. Excellent work!

Thanks; however, the work is far from finished. I also have had some help in building these.

On 4/22/2019 at 11:03 AM, Zcurator said:

Cunning actually gives a block for each evade rolled.

1 hour ago, GuillotineTE said:

Cunning actually gives a block for each evade rolled.

Yep. I guess I was too tired the first time I posted that to notice I didn't even finish the ability's text.

Fix'd

I have one final suggestion, which also comes from a design point of view: I'd never make a figure with two automatic passive defensive abilities. I'd always create figures which have a selection of abilities which encourage active play, and at the same time have the player DO somthing to keep them save, i.e. making decisions regarding their movement and positioning, or which command cards to include, or how to support them with your other figures. You currently have two automatic passive abilities on Cad Bane - I'd ditch one of them and reduce his point cost by 1. That'd make him more interesting to play. I've seen fan-made cards for characters in games for over 15 years now, and one thing that is absolutely common is that people tend to give their favourite characters loads of defensive capabilities. Trust me - resist that urge and Focus on what makes them proactive, it always makes them way more interesting as gaming pieces. As a matter of fact, in my experience games where players can load up on defensive gaming mechanisms are universally always boring, because less happens and actions have less consequences on how the game progresses.

One of my favourite characters is Ahsoka, and before she officially became part of Imperial Assault, I've not seen one fan-made Card for her that convonced me - they all were eith. er way too powerful, and/or far to defensive. I love how FFG have designed her in the game. She is very mobile, she can dish out consistent damage, but she's also squishy and you have to be careful on how you play her and she benefits from support by other friendly figures and your command deck.

3 minutes ago, Fourtytwo said:

I have one final suggestion, which also comes from a design point of view: I'd never make a figure with two automatic passive defensive abilities. I'd always create figures which have a selection of abilities which encourage active play, and at the same time have the player DO somthing to keep them save, i.e. making decisions regarding their movement and positioning, or which command cards to include, or how to support them with your other figures. You currently have two automatic passive abilities on Cad Bane - I'd ditch one of them and reduce his point cost by 1. That'd make him more interesting to play. I've seen fan-made cards for characters in games for over 15 years now, and one thing that is absolutely common is that people tend to give their favourite characters loads of defensive capabilities. Trust me - resist that urge and Focus on what makes them proactive, it always makes them way more interesting as gaming pieces. As a matter of fact, in my experience games where players can load up on defensive gaming mechanisms are universally always boring, because less happens and actions have less consequences on how the game progresses.

One of my favourite characters is Ahsoka, and before she officially became part of Imperial Assault, I've not seen one fan-made Card for her that convonced me - they all were eith. er way too powerful, and/or far to defensive. I love how FFG have designed her in the game. She is very mobile, she can dish out consistent damage, but she's also squishy and you have to be careful on how you play her and she benefits from support by other friendly figures and your command deck.

@Fourtytwo Thanks for the advice. I was getting concerned about this as well.

Fourtytwo really got me thinking earlier yesterday.

Here is what I did for Cad Bane based on feedback and testing.

Mobile was pretty much automatic. It represents both Cad Bane and Todo 360's jet boots.

The Blast 1 surge ability represents a slew of Cad Bane's arsenal; be that twin pistol fire, bombs, or his flamethrower.

I borrowed the text from The Grand Inquisitor to develop his Stun Gauntlets attack. The green and yellow die don't equate to a whole lot of damage, so you usually use a surge for the Pierce 2 ability to get damage through and stun the defender. You can also rely on Todo, in the case of rolling no surges.

I removed the Rapid Fire ability because it ate up too much space. Space I would rather have for more thematic surge abilities.

The blue die was replaced with another green die in his ranged dice pool, because the double green dice pool tends to average three damage and one surge. This surge will most often be used for Pierce 2 to insure damage is dealt. He can also use Todo 360 to provide a surge when .

In the TV series Todo 360 was just always in the right place at the right time for Cad Bane. The 'Command Todo' action is used to reflect this trait. As long as the space Cad Bane needs him in is within 3 spaces (ignoring LoS) Todo will find a way to get there.

Todo's health was dropped to 1. In this way, when Cad Bane uses Todo's surge for Blast, he will also temporarily destroy Todo and thus have to replace him with his 'Command Todo' action if he wants those free surges again. I feel that this really captures the "companionship" on display in the TV series.

It would be good to have an ability saying when a companion activates. The companion rules talk about before and after, but all abilities say at the start or end. (Before or after would actually be cleaner than at the start or end.)

Typos on Todo 360: " + 1 surge", and "additonal" -> "additional".

In addition to Cunning there are also more consistent alternatives: Defensible, Defensive, and Take Cover.

(Edit: Although being a special action should make it clear, it would better to connect the "Apply Stun to the attack results." to it more firmly. For example "This attack gains Stun ." - and yes, also, Stun is a condition keyword and not an attack result.)

4 hours ago, a1bert said:

It would be good to have an ability saying when a companion activates. The companion rules talk about before and after, but all abilities say at the start or end. (Before or after would actually be cleaner than at the start or end.)

I don't understand what you are saying here.

Thanks for pointing out the typos. Fix'd.

4 hours ago, a1bert said:

In addition to Cunning there are also more consistent alternatives: Defensible, Defensive, and Take Cover.

Cad Bane is super cunning in the show (he's up there with other famous cunning characters from across all media imo) and I also like the way the ability works. I looked at Take Cover from the Jawa card, Defensible from the Tank's card, and Defensive from The Grand Inquisitor's card.

Take Cover - Removing evades from the die roll to add blocks didn't really feel like Cad Bane's style to me. When he's fighting, he prefers the challenge of fighting in close quarters and avoiding the opponents dirty plays and overcoming their battle tactics. He definitely runs away in the form of tactical retreats, and I feel like Stun Gauntlets and Mobile allow him to replicate this in the game.

Defensible - This ability came across as too powerful. It's too automatic which makes sense for a tank, but not for a humanoid that commits error.

Defensive - This fits the Grand Inquisitor for sure, who in the show mainly uses his spinning saber in a defensive fighting form. The fact that you will roll blocks 50% of the time made this ability feel like a better fit for someone that relies on armor or even a force field rather than a dexterous combatant.

Because of these above reason I will be sticking to Cunning, but thanks for the feedback.

20 minutes ago, Zcurator said:

I don't understand what you are saying here.

All groups/figures that have companions associated with them also define through ability text (Scrap Batallion of Ugnaughts, Droid Mastery/Droid Master of Jarrod, Cam Droid reward card, Pit Droid supply card, R5 Astromech, Active Surveillance of Reactive Defenses, Indentured Jester skirmish upgrade attachment) how the companion activates. You don't have such an ability and depend on the general description in the companion rules to define when Todo 360 activates.

It's probably fine, but it's still different than existing abilities, and may cause confusion.

10 hours ago, a1bert said:

All groups/figures that have companions associated with them also define through ability text (Scrap Batallion of Ugnaughts, Droid Mastery/Droid Master of Jarrod, Cam Droid reward card, Pit Droid supply card, R5 Astromech, Active Surveillance of Reactive Defenses, Indentured Jester skirmish upgrade attachment) how the companion activates. You don't have such an ability and depend on the general description in the companion rules to define when Todo 360 activates.

It's probably fine, but it's still different than existing abilities, and may cause confusion.

I see what you mean. Added to Cad Bane's ability.

Okay. I am fairly happy with the cards where they are at currently. Now I need to make missions for the characters, but I have no idea where to start.

I have the full collection of Imperial Assault, so I can build from a wide selection of tiles. Are there guidelines for building maps for side missions? I feel like side missions tend to lean on simpler rules and shorter game time.

I want the Cad Bane mission to revolve around him breaking into a rebel garrison that has imperial detractors.

For 4-LOM and Zuckuss I want to have the map be set on a hostile world with deadly atmosphere (which they are immune to) and dangerous wildlife.

Lastly, has their been any resources developed for making missions similar tot he Descent quest builder?

15 hours ago, Zcurator said:

Are there guidelines for building maps for side missions? I feel like side missions tend to lean on simpler rules and shorter game time.

They do have that tendency, but whatever guidelines exist for managing that are being kept within FFG. To my knowledge the only way to work it out is to compare to existing missions as you create a custom one, FFG haven't really provided any resources for mission design at all.

15 hours ago, Zcurator said:

Lastly, has their been any resources developed for making missions similar tot he Descent quest builder?

Not yet, AFAIK. The guy who made Valkyrie for Descent started on an IA version of it, but it's not finished. Portable Wartable does something with missions but I'm not sure if it allows creating custom ones. And I'm maybe 20% of the way into adding a Mission Designer into the Kensei Imperial Assault Tools Suite but there's a lot left to do and I haven't worked on it lately.

(Another top tip: use the <trait> tag in your cards, so <trait>Harmful</trait> instead of <i>HARMFUL</i>).

On 5/6/2019 at 6:55 AM, Bitterman said:

(Another top tip: use the <trait> tag in your cards, so <trait>Harmful</trait> instead of <i>HARMFUL</i>). 

Thanks for the tip.

Maybe I'm thick, but I don't get the master thief on campaign 4-LOM. Why does it add strain to a crate? If you do this to track which crates have been used for this ability, maybe it should be clarified as such or removed (i.e. Hondo doesn't have this). Or is there another reason?

18 hours ago, Eddie said:

Maybe I'm thick, but I don't get the master thief on campaign 4-LOM. Why does it add strain to a crate? If you do this to track which crates have been used for this ability, maybe it should be clarified as such or removed (i.e. Hondo doesn't have this). Or is there another reason?

That was the reason. But you are right. I guess I never noticed that Hondo doesn't have a way to note which spaces he's done this with.

Edited 4-LOM to stay consistent. Thanks.