Where are these character statistics? The only statistics I know of are the one in the sticky but I don't see where each chararacter's stats are broken down.

Avi, I agree that some people don't play them as powerfully as they could because they choose to make them less powerful. However, that being the case, Daisy is still significantly lower than would be expected of one of the top investigators.

allstar, it's in the sticky, you click on the link to get the google documents page and you can click on the different pages to see the stats per investigator. I did notice that practically all of the Innsmouth investigators are close to the bottom. It could be because people haven't figured out how to use them beneficially yet, or it could be that most of the Innsmouth Ancient Ones are quite difficult.

johnwatersfan said:

Not really. If an player thinks that playing Daisy well means getting her a shriveling, then she's really no big deal. Only a second tier character. To play her optimally you need to go for the alchemy and loads of money for unique items and spells. Or to play her super-optimally ;'D (I can't bring myself to go this far), you just go for an easy ancient one kill with Call Ancient One.

Avi_dreader said:

The truth is probably between these two extremes. The investigators at the top of the list are likely the ones who have the best abilities or equipment, but remember that there's a difficulty bias for the base game investigators, because Innsmouth investigators are likely to be using the Innsmouth expansion.

As far as the "frequent contributors" theory, well, 75% of games are played with randomly selected investigators, so the bias should be minimal. Plus, who's to say that in the "chosen investigator" submissions, the players chose characters that they thought were the strongest, necessarily? You would expect to see Daisy farther up the ladder, anyway.

The reason older investigators have better stats has nothing to do with the greater number of games played with them per se, nor, I am convinced, is it significantly affected by better play with familiar investigators whose strategies have been mastered. It is simply that the game has become harder over time- the base game is easier than any expansion, and Innsmouth is easily harder than either of the previous board expansions.

Consequently, a significant proportion of games played with, say, Carolyn Fern, will have used only the base game, either because the poster doesn't own the expansions or because they were posted before the expansions even came out. Games with Wendy, however, are significantly less likely to use only the base game, as for her to be being used at all, the player of the game must at least own Kingsport and likely plays with it or another board expansion reasonably frequently. Consequently "games with Wendy in", are a lot harder on average for the investigators than "games with Carolyn in", even before you take the investigators' power into account.

It's a testament to Patrice's power that even with this major handicap (a high proportion of games played with her will use Innsmouth, the hardest expansion), she *still* manages to come out on top.

I don't see how it's even possible to lose with Patrice. Game becomes insanely easy when she's in it. You don't even have to collect clue tokens- Enough that you have some money to buy 2 unique items and she gains 5 clues. What I do with her is, after I complete her story, is sending her on Kingsport duty for the rest of the game. She still gains a clue token every time a gate opens and an extra 5 clues when there are 9 doom tokens on the track, letting other investigators hop into gates without a single clue in their possession and then seal it.

Patrice quickly makes the game a joke, which is why she's one of the investigators I've house ruled (and the one who received the most strict house-ruling).

What sort of huse-ruling? I guess the most logical would allow her to trade clues as though they were items if she's in the same space as another investigator instead of her normal ability, but I'm not sure how good she will be then.

Trading clues sounds reasonable; her other ability is also pretty powerful.

But the way I have it is that Patrice may only allow her clues to be spent for skill checks, but not for anything else (sealing gates, warding off Quachil Uttaus, etc). Additionally, her abilities are still pretty strong, so I've lowered her focus to 1 (making her the only investigator with a focus point penalty, as opposed to a bonus).

I use Tibs' fix for Patrice. I also rule that she only gains 1 clue token when the ninth space on the doom track is filled. Also, passing her story only gets her a +2 to Luck instead of a boatload of clues.

Too many changes for my taste... I think that next time I draw her I would simply use a hard herald to balance it off a little (groth/black goat/dagon+hydra, depends on the AO and wich one of these would make him more difficult)

Or you could just use one or the other of her powers but not both.

That's a good point...I had also been thinking along the lines of altering how she shares clues, but if you turn off her other ability and just nerf her clues at the source, it's even less of an issue (though either remedy still leaves her as a not-very-fun-to-play clue gofer)

Even with all my nerfs, I still found her to be a fun character to play. She accumulates clues pretty quick.

yeah, I don't make any changes to Patrice, I just don't play her TOO often..