I've modified my random hero generator and added a point-buy editor using similar rules. You can raise and lower the hero's attributes within the point allowance and select from over 200 abilities; the creation rules are also parametrized and highly customizable, so if you don't think the way I set it up is fair, you can change the point allowance, the costs, and the ability list to whatever you wish.

I don't guarantee this will be completely balanced; in particular, some costs that are appropriate for random generation may be too low when someone is min/maxxing the stats. But I think it's pretty good, and I want it to be as good as practical, so please post some heroes you make, or observations/concerns about balance.

Here's a few heroes I created:

Vargrim the Vengeful
Conquest: 1
Stats: 8 wounds, 0 armor, 4 fatigue, 5 speed
Traits: 3 magic
Skills: 1 subterfuge, 2 wizardry
When you resurrect, you may immediately move your speed and make one attack.

Nira Nightwatch
Conquest: 4
Stats: 16 wounds, 2 armor, 3 fatigue, 3 speed
Traits: 2 melee, 2 ranged, 2 magic
Skills: 2 fighting, 1 subterfuge
You can trace line-of-sight through Fog. Your attacks ignore Fear and Ghost. The overlord cannot spawn monsters in spaces that have line-of-sight to any empty space adjacent to you.

Merad the Learned
Conquest: 2
Stats: 12 wounds, 0 armor, 3 fatigue, 3 speed
Traits: 1 melee, 1 ranged, 1 magic
Skills: 2 fighting, 2 subterfuge, 2 wizardry
When you receive starting skills, you draw twice the listed number in each category, then discard down to the listed numbers.

Wow, this thing is crazy. I thought the random hero generator was fun, but this is really a neat idea. I think the next time I play, I might allow my heroes to sit down and build their own adventurers. Soooo many more options than what is available with FFG's creation rules + existing heroes. And with the editor so customizable it will be easy to tweak the heroes BP up or down if we think they're under or over powered. Thanks a lot, I'm eager to try this out in a game.

New version up (same link). Added a "Log" tab where you can save any number of heroes you've designed/generated, and copy them back to the editor later on. The log is also preloaded with most of FFG's heroes.

I also tweaked the BP and conquest values slightly and added several new abilities. If anyone's using the editor, it would be useful to know if the new parameters feel better or worse. You should notice that costs for raising a single number don't escalate as quickly, but skills are a little more expensive in general. Conquest values also shouldn't jump around as much. Most heroes got very slightly more expensive overall.

New version. Added an option for the editor to automatically your trait priority (chooses the most efficient legal option based on your current traits, skills, and abilities, and automatically updates as you change things). Also fixed a bug related to copying heroes from the log to the editor, and changed the costs of a couple abilities (notably Defender and Tactician).

Two questions:

Vargrim: When exactly does a hero resurrect? It's probably in the rules but it's not a question I've ever had to ask myself before. If he resurrects as soon as he dies, that means he'll often be taking a turn in the middle of the OL's turn (is that intended of this ability?) If he resurrects at the start of his next turn, he functionally gets two turns in a row, one of which is basically forced to be an Advance? Also, since it happens immediately after res, this entire sequence would take place prior to "start of turn" effects, if any, I presume.

Nightwatch: Awesome ability, but I fear it would be a headache keeping track of that last part during play. I'm assuming you thought about the ability at least a little bit when you added it to the list, so if I might inquire, what are your thoughts on this one? Not criticizing, mind you, just looking for a little "designer diary" style commentary.

Edit: BTW, awesome job, Stoney! You are indeed a boon to the entire Descent community for this.

Resurrection occurs immediately, and Vargrim's ability is an interrupt effect. Admittedly, "resurrection" is not a defined game term, so the description is a little vague, but I meant "after resolving all the standard immediate effects of hero death".

"When a hero loses his last wound token, he is killed. The hero immediately moves to the town. If it was the hero’s turn, his turn immediately ends. The hero players then immediately lose a number of conquest tokens equal to the hero’s conquest rating. If this reduces their total to 0 or fewer conquest tokens, the game ends immediately and the overlord player wins. Otherwise, the game continues." (Rules p.16)

Of course, the down side to coming back into the dungeon instantly is that any remaining monsters can continue to attack you. You can even theoretically die multiple times during a single overlord turn (triggering your ability each time).

Nira Nightwatch's ability (or the last part of it) is kind of like Crack Shot, but for spawn prevention instead of attacks. It gives slightly better LOS coverage in general, and allows specialized maneuvers like hiding around a corner without letting the OL spawn on the other side. It also saves you 1 movement point on turns when you'd move to a specific square to block spawns. I originally considered the effect for a skill in The Enduring Evil, but decided it probably wasn't worth an entire skill, especially because spawns are less important in EE.

The example heroes in the first post were made in version 2.0 of the editor and may not be strictly within budget after the various cost tweaks I've made (I haven't checked), though they're presumably still pretty close.

Antistone said:

So Nira must declare an adjacent square from which LoS is traced during the OL's turn (in addition to her real space, of course.)? I got the impression that every adjacent space could be used in this manner, and that's where it seemed to get messy to me. Not saying it's broken, just a handful to remember about when the OL is trying to spawn.

Nira Nightwatch blocks spawning within LOS of every space adjacent to her. I seriously doubt that's any harder to remember than being able to block from one adjacent space (possibly even easier, since you don't need to remember which space the hero chose). It's a little more work to calculate, certainly, but I doubt it's that bad; the overlord already needs to consider multiple heroes for every potential space where he's considering spawning, and Nira's spaces are tightly grouped, so it should usually be trivial to determine which is the "best" square to test from to see if any given square is blocked or not.

That said, I haven't actually played with her.

How similar that is to Crack Shot depends on how you draw your analogy; you could look at it as Nira choosing one space to trace LOS from for each space the overlord tries to spawn, or you could look at Crack Shot as actually giving you line-of-sight from all adjacent spaces all the time, it's just that only one of them matters for any given attack.

Quick question about Herogen. Why does the Heraldry Skill increase Conquest by 0.7? Does it increase the hero survivability that much? I know it increaes survivability, by allowing some strong equipment combinations, but still 0.7 is on par with Undying and Stealth. Besides Battlemage Jaes' ability doesn't increase Conquest at all, despite clearly increasing a hero's survivability.

Elric of Melniboné said:

Carrying two shields while still wielding a (selection of) 2H rune weapon? In other words, permanently having two shields up.

Yes, Heraldry assumes you're going to equip 2 more shields than you otherwise would; even if they're only Iron Shields, that's close to having +2 max wounds and Regeneration 2, especially if you would otherwise be the party's squishy hero (which mages often are). It also means that Ghost Armor doesn't take up an Other slot, though I think you're unlikely to run out of Other slots in vanilla.

It's conceivable that .7 is too big a conquest increase, but if so then Shield Master is also too big a conquest increase at .4. Though I suppose that those values are arguably in conflict with values for other regeneration-like abilities, including Mystic Shield and Ispher's Ability. Maybe they all should move a bit closer to their collective average...

Oh, and I'm not sure I agree that Jaes' ability "clearly" increases survivability, at least in the general case: it depends whether you assume that the hero would otherwise have used runes and light armor, or heavy armor but no runes, and the latter is the more common strategy (heroes equipping melee, ranged, staves, or dual shields would usually not give up heavy armor for the ability to equip runes). The most likely use (at least on a hand-built hero, including Jaes himself) is a hero with a rune weapon and heavy armor, but the value of the ability is approximately the minimum of the difference between light and heavy armor or the difference between a rune weapon and a staff.

Admittedly, many of the prices in the editor were originally set when it was just a random generator, and so may be tuned more to the average random case than to a hand-crafted synergistic case.

Thanks (both Corbon and Antistone) for the insightful answers. One more question about Heraldry, then...Runes still count as equipped items with this ability (hence no heavy armor), don't they? I interpreted it like this, but just to make sure I wanted to ask, since I'm making a character with that ability (and of course it's not tha squishy type...but, well...you should know me, at this point).

PS - By the way, what about my last spawns with Herogen?

Heraldry means that Runes don't count against your limit for number of items equipped. It doesn't allow you to use an item without equipping it.

Anything that prevents you from equipping Runes...prevents you from equipping Runes.

That's just how I thought it worked, and it's right...after all, equipping 2 shields, up to 2 Other Items giving Armor Bonus (Ring of Protection and Knights Ring), AND any number of Runes, is already quite big!

Thanks for the clarification, Antistone!

I did a test game that suggests that 1-conquest heroes may be significiantly overpowered in the current editor (made an all 1-conquest party and beat a fairly difficult quest with almost half the total conquest remaining). It's possible that it's partly due to synergistic abilities and skills (notably Avenger, and a hero with Dying Breath who drew Overdrive and Necrotic Traversal), but I doubt that was the only reason.

Has anyone else tried them out?

Antistone said:

Apart from Zyla (who has other issues - Fly!)?
No, sorry.
Although it can be cool, in a way, for really out of the box heroes, I much prefer to stay very much closer to the traditional style, as much as is possible.

Has anyone tried these custom point generated hearoes in a Road to Legend or Sea of Blood campaigns? Do they work or is it better to stick with the pregenerated ones?

I'm not necessarily the best person to answer this, since I've never played an advanced campaign, but I can at least make a few observations.

The advanced campaign has some significantly altered game mechanics. That will mean that a few of the abilities don't even make sense in the advanced campaign (like the one that lets you perform a shop movement action in the dungeon), and others may be more or less powerful. The campaign rules also change the meaning of some hero stats, which may change their relative value.

Even official heroes don't translate over perfectly; some characters have special rules just for the advanced campaign, and some become more or less powerful than they are in vanilla (at least compared to other heroes). Also, official characters vary significantly in power, so there can be a certain amount of imbalance in custom heroes without necessarily being worse than official ones.

I suspect that you could get something close enough to be playable if you addressed a few problem areas, though there's always some risk that something broken will slip through. I'd be concerned about the following:

• Starting skills are much less valuable in the extended campaign, because they actually just give you additional options for your one starting skill rather than letting you start with more skills. This means that heroes could become overpowered by starting with very few skills (possibly none, since you get one free draw of any type). Ideally, this would be addressed by changing the skill costs to something balanced for the advanced campaign, but probably neither you nor I know what those costs would be. The easier option is just to tell your players that they must have three starting skills, like a normal hero.
• Some abilities are problematic, either because they don't make sense or change significantly in value. There are far too many abilities in the editor for me to think of all of them, but if you try to avoid the obvious problems and then post the abilities you're planning to use to get other forum members' opinions on them before starting, I think you'd be fairly safe. Particularly watch out for stuff in the "equipment" category.
• Trait dice change somewhat in value, but I don't think it's enough to worry much about. Heroes won't want to start with 5 dice in one trait, because having an extra "slot" to buy dice with fatigue after you roll is a bigger deal in the advanced campaign, but most heroes don't start with that anyway, and there's no incentive to design a character using an imbalance that makes him weaker. Heroes also probably won't want to get dice in more than one trait.
• Heroes with especially high conquest values (relative to their defenses) probably drag the party down even more in an advanced campaign than in vanilla. New players using my editor always seem to want to have crappy defenses and high conquest value to free up more build points; resist the temptation. Consider requiring heroes to use the "close" conquest value in the editor. Maybe use custom heroes in one or two vanilla games first so that players can see how they work in practice.

You could also consider using the random hero generator, but I suppose if you're a new player then the official heroes also seem fresh and interesting, so maybe random doesn't offer any advantage.

+1 to everything Antistone said.

I've played in Advanced Campaigns with custom heroes, some of which were a little overpowered (though not as much as some official heroes) and some of which were underpowered (again, not as much as some official heroes). Both the overpowering and underpowering were results of using the official hero maker pdf, with all its problems, before Antistone released his generator, which is much better. We 'needed' new heroes to keep party balance options open after playing multiple campaigns and not wanting to reuse heroes.
Generally it is workable, but you do have to be careful and I would strongly advise three things:
1. Try to stick as close as possible to the 'standard' hero formula - 3 skills, 3 dice, 12-13 stats (W/4). Variations here aren't too important really, but the balance is slightly different for ACs for skills and trait dice and Antistone has mentioned, so the costings are not necessarily appropriate if you try to vary from the basic formula too much.
2. Stick as closely as possible to the 360pt mark. Any hero not within 5 pts should be 'adjusted' immediately to come within 355-365, and I would seriously aim at no more than 360 if at all possible - you are already likely to have slightly better heroes due to internal synergy when you design your own.
3. Get peer reviews from experienced players (ie here or BGG) for heroes you make. Not everyone will agree on every point, but some things are definitely miscosted or inappropriate due to differences in ACs and vanilla Descent, and most such things will get caught or commented on if you post for peer-review.

I would also suggest that rather than design specific heroes to play with, you design a bunch of heroes and throw them into the mix with the official heroes and still draw 4 groups of 3 heroes to choose from as per the rules - that keeps the party balance mechanisms working - for example you may have to sacrifice the perfect Ranger in order to get the best Mage, and then only use the second best ranger you drew. That is part of the balancing mechanism IMO, though very new players probably won't get too much of an advantage from designing their party completely.

As i mentioned before we are well into our 13th campaign in descent and the last 2 have been with custom players from antistone's amazing editor which gave new life to our game.

2 things though.

1st) Vigor is simply ridiculous and we haven't even tried putting it on a player cause it sounds WAY too overpowered. Recovering fatigue by spending movement points sound too powerful when you consider that varikas ability of getting a single fatigue per round costs 55 points and vigor costs 10 points so either varikas is way overpriced or vigor is heavily underpriced.

2nd) I want to make a wild surge character as i said to antistone but dodge will ruin any hopes so i was thinking of a perk "Your attacks can't be dodged".

Now i know their the skye familiar which is way more powerful giving -1 armor to multiple targets and no DODGE or aim and it even works for other player's attacks so what would be the price for a no dodge on your attacks ability?

I would think 10points would be more than fair cause i really don't think it would be anyone's pick.

A sidenote also we have kept away from skills that were probably made before the AC was introduced and would mean sure win for the players from the start as the ability to prevent a card the OL plays with a mere 2 fatigue. Since i can make a 8 fatigue player that will probably keep the OL from playing any spawn cards until the dungeon is done and dusted.

Another thing i would like to make an ability that by paying fatigue to add more targets to your attack that you have LOS. The concept is a ranger that puts multiple arrows in his bow.

I was thinking something like pay 2 fatigue to add one more target to your attack that you have LOS.

I know it sounds like rapid fire but don't forget that rapid fire is 2 or more seperate attacks, you can move between attacks and if you miss with the one i am saying you paid fatigue you missed all your targets which is far worst and you will probably be unable to play aim if you need to move which you will probably need to get LOS. Any thoughts on costs on this ability would be welcome Antistone.

First of all, the editor was designed long after Road to Legend came out, but I have made no attempt to balance things for an extended campaign. The extended campaign is really a different game, and there are quite a few things that become a lot more or less powerful - plus, I haven't played the extended campaigns, so I don't have the experience necessary to balance for it.

For starters, skills should cost a lot less in a campaign than they do in vanilla, because you're just buying extra starting options instead of starting with more total skills. There was an effort at one point to modify the abilities for campaign play, but I don't think it got very far. You'll probably have to individually review every ability you're considering and think about whether it's more (or less) powerful in a campaign, and by how much.

Varikas' ability costs more than Vigor because Varikas' ability gives you one fatigue every turn for free, while using Vigor has a cost. In my experience, fatigue is most often spent to gain movement points, so Vigor mostly lets you "save" unused movement for your next turn. That's a LOT weaker than getting a free extra move every turn, at least in vanilla. It does mean that you can "Rest" with no risk of interruption if your speed is at least as high as your fatigue, but the ability that stops you from ever losing any order due to wounds (Imperturbable) only costs 15 BP. It's possible Vigor is a little too cheap, but it's really not that impressive, unless there's some awesome use in the advanced campaign I'm not aware of.

Skye is significantly weakened by the fact that she moves after your turn, which means her owner almost never benefits from her ability. It's true that having undodgable attacks isn't that powerful of an ability, but I'd be very careful about adding perks that negate specific overlord cards; they're likely to end up getting a huge spike in power under very specific circumstances, which is bad for balance, and reducing the variety of cards the overlord can usefully play risks making the game dull.

Adding an independent target to your attack for 2 fatigue is very nearly the same as Rapid Fire, and in vanilla is actually probably better, assuming you can pay it multiple times on the same attack to hit even more targets. According to the GLoAQ, Rapid Fire does NOT allow you to move between attacks (though I agree, going strictly by the skill text it should). The fact that you're more likely to miss both targets is roughly balanced by the fact that you're also more likely to hit both targets, and spending resources to boost the attack (fatigue, power potion, aim order, etc.) will help against all targets instead of just one (that might even make Aim worth using...against enemies with Stealth). The only real disadvantage I'm seeing is that you can't use it to repeatedly attack the same target.

There's a weapon in The Enduring Evil that lets you spend surges to hit extra spaces of your choice, and I balanced it by assuming that each extra target was as valuable as an added rank of Blast (actually, I balanced Blast by assuming that each rank would let you hit 1 extra target on average, but the end result is the same).

Rapid Fire is among the best skills in the game, so for vanilla, the ability that you describe should probably cost almost as much as getting Perfect Skill and using it to select Rapid Fire...that would put it at about 90-100 BP. In an extended campaign, you can get fatigue upgrades to further abuse the ability, so I'd guess it should cost even more. If you can't use it multiple times per attack, that would maybe lower the cost by 10-20 BP.

Alternately, you can use the Twin Shot ability that's already in the editor, which lets you target an extra space of your choice when you use an Aim order on an attack (no fatigue cost). That costs 35 BP for melee and 50 BP for ranged or magic (since it's easier to have multiple targets in range).

50 Does sound much since the only think you do is target an additional target that you would have targeted anyway if you had played battle. So the only advantage is that you have an aimed battle but if you had played battle you could also move through the attacks and get position for a second attack something that you can't do with twinshot so i think it is kind of overpriced since you might as well pick up deadeye for a mere 30 points and be far better.

Also another question antistone. Does cumulative defense mean damaged as written or does it mean wounded? Damaged would be far better ofcourse but i am thinking maybe it was mistyped or something. Thanks mate for your time.

Drglord said:

Deadeye costs you a fatigue for every X you want to reroll, and it only lets you reroll Xs. Twinshot is free (when you meet the prerequisites) and you can reroll all the dice, so it increases your average result as well as lowering your miss chance. Also, as discussed in my last post, any other resources you spend (e.g. fatigue, power potions) help you against both targets (and the extra dice can be rerolled). Deadeye is more flexible, but I think Twinshot is better overall.

It might be easier to compare Twin Shot to Harrier, which gives you a free Aim order during an Advance. Twin Shot is kind of like getting 2 free Aim orders during a Battle, and it costs twice as much (for ranged or magic). Twin Shot requires you to make both attacks at once, but I find that I Battle more often than I Advance.

Also, Twin Shot combos with anything that gives you an Aim order, such as an ally with Leadership, and boosts the effectiveness of an Aim order placed on the turn before you open a door.

If you disagree, you can, of course, make any modifications to the editor that your play group agrees to. There's almost no chance that I'm exactly right on every single one of 300 different abilities.

Drglord said:

I meant damage; I'm generally very precise with my technical wording.

Yes, that means that the overlord may occasionally be better off if a particular monster doesn't attack you at all, and that the order of attacks matters. But you usually need to be attacked at least 3 times in a single round in order for it to be as good as a simple +1 armor, and it only costs a little less than raising your base armor by 1 in most cases.

I haven't actually play-tested it, though.