Hi fellow Descendants,

All my custom heroes are focused heavily on two main factors - BALANCE and FUN TO USE.

They are usually non-human and have very intriguing abilities, but balanced out as fairly as can be done.

I hereby present Volume One:

The Werewolf

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This Hero is a killer bent on turning all its foes into bloody ribbons. Being a werewolf, it has powerful natural armor, not to mention its incredible speed. However, it is also more beast than man, and it does not possess the intellect that its allies might enjoy. It starts with ONLY ONE skill card, though it can pay a high price to learn more in Town at a later stage. But it also comes equipped with its own regeneration abilities and its terrifying claws that can penetrate the toughest armor. Recommended Figurine: I used the OL's Beastman figurine for this, painted differently of course. (Black looks good)

The Ninja

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The typical 'runner' class does not give players a good feel of being a stealthy ninja or backstabbing assassin. The closest original Hero we have seen from the vanilla set is the one named Bogran who has backstab bonus. This person was made to quench the thirst of all the ninja lovers out there, myself included! Possessing high speed and great Subterfuge skill amount, he was built to become the true-blue ninja. He can 'dodge' any attack, as many times as his fatigue allows. However, he is also low in health and taking blows will punish him more than it does to others. Note that dodge in here does not mean an automatic miss by the enemy. Rather, it works the same as the 'dodge' command in Descent world. (re-rolling of attack dice) Recommended Figurine: I would use Bogran's figurine if he is not already in the game.

The Defender

This babe was born a Tanker. She was inspired from the original hero One-Fist, except that instead of having an extra attack from a hooked arm, hers is a mighty shield that can block almost any attack. While her forte is her defense, her downfall is her speed and high Conquest Value. Recommended Figurine: I bought a pewter figurine of a female crusader with a large shield and wielding a sword, which works perfectly for this character.

The Duelwielder

Inspired by D&D legend Drizzt, this dark lady was meant for double melee wielding. She moves very quickly, and can take down heavily armored enemies quickly with her dual weapon style. Recommended Figurine: Any female elf figurine works perfectly! Or a female figure wielding 2 swords looks good too.

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They have ALL been playtested by my group of friends for at least 3 games each and we found them extremely fun and balanced (vanilla set used for testing). However, as is protocol of all good balancing, these Heroes should never be considered balanced based off a single group. I need help from as many of you to give inputs and feedbacks from helping to playtest these creations as possible. I welcome all comments, even if they are criticisms! Thanks in advance to the beloved community of Descent!

I implore all of you in the Descent community to assist me in playtesting these heroes in your games and give some feedbacks.

You may or may not be aware that I created my own Descent hero editor . It's certainly not perfect, but I thought it might provide a useful point of comparison. It uses a point-buy system, and I usually permit heroes that cost up to 360 build points (BP), which is close to the median cost to recreate official FFG heroes.

Shredsmurth (The Werewolf):

Cost to recreate (without abililty): 245 BP * (extrapolated, since editor doesn't normally support 10 wounds)

Abilities for comparison:

• 15 BP Ispher's Ability - You have Regeneration 1 . You are immune to Poison .
• 100 BP Needling - Your attacks have Pierce 5 .

Almost all abilities in my editor cost less than 100 BP, but this hero could afford both of the above and still barely reach the 360 BP cap.

Losing two skills is a very big deal, and I think playing with only one skill would be fairly dull; skills are often the most interesting part of a hero, and can heavily influence tactics. This hero is also rather squishy at 4 conquest; most 4-CT heroes with 2 armor have 16 wounds; Jaes has only 12, but he's a borderline case.

Obsidian Shade (The Ninja):

Cost to recreate (without ability): 247 BP

Abilities for comparison:

• 25 BP Jourm's Ability - When you place a Dodge order, you gain movement points equal to half your speed (rounded up)
• 35 BP Disruption - Attacks made by adjacent enemy figures are always dodged, even if they do not target you
• 30 BP Adrenaline - During your turn, you may sacrifice 1 wound to place a Dodge order
• 50 BP Reactive Defense - Whenever you suffer wounds from a monster's attack, you may immediately place a Dodge order
• 45 BP Agility - You may spend 2 fatigue to place a Dodge order on yourself at any time

At 3 conquest, this hero is very squishy; the only official hero with 8 health and 0 armor is worth one . Even if his ability was simply to dodge all attacks, all the time (no fatigue cost), I suspect he'd need to drink invisibility potions constantly to avoid being a liability to his party...and that will prevent him from using vitality potions, rather compromising his ability as a runner. With his current ability, my feeling is that his conquest value should be set to 2, and he'd still be weak.

All subterfuge skills also gives a very high probability he's going to draw a skill that's worthless as long as he's using a melee weapon, making it likely he'll either be forced to use his lower trait or effectively forfeit one or more skills.

Aegis Brightelf (The Defender):

Cost to recreate (without ability): 258 BP

Abilities for comparison:

• ~80 BP Mystic Shield - Place 4 threat tokens on your hero sheet. You may discard one to cancel one received wound. Regain 2 (to a maximum of 4) at the start of each turn.

Canceling 4 wounds for 1 fatigue is very powerful; combined with high armor, that will probably completely negate most monster attacks (for example, with chainmail that will negate a max damage beastman attack). Keep this hero in fatigue (say, using another hero with Leadership for risk-free Resting) and it could be very difficult to damage her at all. In fact, it's such an efficient use of fatigue that using it hardly even seems like a choice; using it is almost mandatory. I'm not sure how to evaluate that.

Limiting a hero to one hand slot and then giving her a magic trait is just insulting, though. There's only a single one-handed magic weapon in the entire game (Star of Kellos, gold treasure from Tomb of Ice expansion), so that's completely worthless without the appropriate expansion, and still enormously unlikely to see use even with it.

Night Drow (The Dualwielder):

Cost to recreate (without ability): 258 BP

Abilities for comparison:

• 30 BP Ambidextrous (EE) - While equipping two Melee weapons, you may receive Off-Hand Bonuses from both.
• ~62 BP Mad Carthos' Ability (melee) - You gain +2 damage when making a Melee attack.

It's not clear whether the second part of her ability is supposed to apply to all attacks or only while dual-wielding.

With official treasures, gaining an Off-Hand Bonus from your primary weapon is almost always going to mean +1 damage. There's just not much variation in the Off-Hand bonuses that treasures give, and none of them are good enough that you would have seriously considered actually using the treasure as an off-hand weapon.

You run a significant risk of not drawing any one-handed melee weapons for a given treasure level (around half the melee weapons are two-handed), and even if you do, you can't choose to use a shield without forfeiting this ability. Even if that Pierce 2 is also contingent upon dual-wielding, I think this hero will still end up not dual-wielding in a substantial fraction of games. Not a lot you can do about that, that's just how the treasures work.

8/0 and 2 conquest is, again, squishy. You seem to be really fond of making heroes with high conquest values and poor defenses. In this case, it's even weaker than it looks, because 5 speed penalizes her for wearing heavy armor and her ability penalizes her for using a shield, so she's just going to die a lot and lose conquest for the party.

And...I'm sorry, but "Night Drow"? You're clearly basing this on the D&D drow, in which case they're already dark-skinned and live underground, so I don't see what would distinguish a night drow from the regular kind of drow, or even how you'd tell underground, nor do I see how this could possibly pass as a proper name in any case. That's like naming a hero "Day Human". It's not a name, it's a description, and it's a poor description, at that.

Your heroes seem to be fairly consistent in their design criteria, which is good, but with the possible exception of Aegis Brightelf (another strange name, actually), they all seem to be distinctly on the weak and easy-to-kill side.

I apologize for the corny names.... But I tot Night sounded pretty cool for a Drow. And I wanted to stress that she was a drow, and den I realized that Night the Drow sounded even more ridiculous. It sounds as if someone called out "Knight the drow!" and a king appears and bestows a title upon the drow.

And WOW! You have something great there, that Hero Editor thingy. I have taken in your much appreciated and constructive criticisms, and I tink perhaps there are some points tat really deserve attention. I will modify my custom heroes once more to make them more balanced yet. As expected, one party of heroes is not enuff to get good feedbacks. And yea, the ninja dude and the drow do die alot, but they contribute amongst the most in the playtests. (esp ninja guy - his dodge is literally invincible, but tats probably the player's luck, or rather... mine (OL) )

Note that the official rules only allow an attack to be re-rolled once . You can certainly change that - it's the home brews section, after all - but a group using official rules will find Obsidian Shade's ability less effective.

We used the official rules... But they had the irritating ability to choose WHICH DIE TO REROLL. This way, all my dice that came up with either 1 damage or 1 surge or blank, they kept and they made me reroll the others. Often I get an X on the reroll T_T

The latest editions to give yet more balance after weighing words of heavyweight veteran Anti-Stone!

The Ninja

Some skills migrated over to melee seeing as how his power dice lean towards. Also dropped his Conquest Value since he's so 'squishy'.

Night Drow

Her speed enjoyed a boost beyond the norm so that she can do hit-and-runs more easily since she dies often.

Aegis Brightelf

She is now only able to block 3 wounds instead of 4. Also, her magic leanings still stay. This is deliberately meant to balance her up for her abilities.

Shredsmurth

Our favourite hero receives a boost in health! His dull playing style stays after much debating with my playing group though, as they all feel that he was meant to be played in a no-brainer style.

P.S: I am STILL APPEALING for yet more feedbacks! A million thanks to AntiStone for his wise words.

Your heroes look great.

Obsidian Shade seems pretty cool. I would say based on his abilities his CV is just right a great runner with lots of fatigue for versatility.

Night Drow introduces a low conquest melee warrior which is very uncommon, a nice addition. She can make a good runner who can fight her own fights or sacrifice her speed to gain some defense. If you wanted to include additional heritage to the Deep Elves, she could be given immunity to Frost. Again I feel her CV is appropriate based on her stats.

Aegis Brightelf worries me a bit. She would be a devestating tank if she was able to rest or recover fatigue (leadership...cringe). Currently she has a starting armor of 4 (chain mail) and a free triple strength ghost armor. Most monsters will never touch her. Additional fatigue will continue to increase her effectiveness.
I figure you are attempting to simulate her using a shield. One idea could be to allow her to spend 1 fatigue at any time to ready an unready equiped shield. This ability is weaker, but still flexible, it also will progress with the campaign or dungeon treasure progression as her defense bonus will be limited by the treasure available.

Shredsmurth is a little more complicated, he seems a little over powered. I would consider him on par with Nanok (pre-Sea of Blood nerf). Some questions I would have based on the theme of the card would be. Can he wear armor, being that he is a were-wolf/wolfman? Does he gain the pierce on any attack, melee attacks only or only with his claws (unarmed 1 red die + melee traits)? If he were to have restrictions of these sort I would start to consider his CV value too high. The skill loss for Road to Legend has little impact, just a smaller selection to choose from at the start. It has a major impact to Vanilla. I don't think I would a heroes skill selection below 2.

All in all you did a great job on the cards.

Goodness me!! No wonder Anti-Stone was saying that Aegis Brightelf seemed overpowered! I think we all hav a misunderstanding here, and its PURELY MY FAULT for the poor wordings! I had originally intended for Aegis to only be able to use her ability ONCE per turn (just like any shield) but your suggestion is pretty **** good, Darkspell. I am revising final editions for these custom Heroes, and here they are: (Thanks AntiStone and Darkspell, I now feel they are completely ready for proper gaming)

The Defender (Major revamp on ability)

The Ninja (No change)

The Werewolf (No change)

The Dualwielder (Immunity to Frost added)

Just revamped all 4 of my characters for some minor rebalancing. Made a very interesting revamp for Shredsmurth.

P.S: Heyz DarkSpell, the list of heroes you sent me has been received! I find ur creations interesting and certainly inspire me to build my own compendium! So sorry about having to write my reply here coz I have no idea where the #@%^* private messaging button is...

The Ninja:

The Dualwielder: (Drow)

The Defender:

The Werewolf:

Hmm dont be mad at me, i tried to alternate the cards a bit for my own group, what do you think of these variants? :

© Wanderer999

© Wanderer999

© Wanderer999

© Wanderer999

and here are two of my own creation, you are a quite expirienced player, so you might have a look at them:

I encourage people to tweak my characters to suit their own needs and requirements. So no worries there about getting angry

*Note: Melee is spelt that way, not meele.

HOWEVER, I would have appreciated it if u had created a new thread instead of posting your creations here since this thread was meant for the original creations.

And lastly:

Regarding all ur tweaked versions of my characters, I have no comments since they are probably what your playgroup prefers, and I shall have no say there. As long as you enjoy playing those tweaked versions, by all means go ahead! Descent is all about homebrew and FUN.

Vanok Ironskin is TERRIBLE! He is a very good tanker but his attack is way too weak! For thematic purposes, that does not seem to match his style. I would have assumed he would be a hard hitting melee guy. And while his armor is SUPERB, it gets weaker late-game until it becomes normal since he is restricted from wearing silver and gold armor.

Lokhir is weak at the start, but his ability is somewhat too strong... U can actually 'earn 500 gold' from killing 3 monsters? After bashing in 9 monsters, Lokhir becomes a 16 Wounds, 1 Armor guy with Magic at 5 power dice. I would recommend that his melee and wizardry traits become 2 - 2 when the first bronze chest is opened. 3 - 3 when the first silver is opened, and 4 - 4 when the first gold is opened. And I will reduce his speed by 1, but increase his fatigue by 1. This allows him to move just a little more, yet not too much if he runs. And he can use that extra fatigue for other purposes and abilities.

oh okay i can remove my two ideas if you want, no problem...

Ironskin is meant to be a heavy tank ... hmm yeah your point is correct... maybe i will tweak him a bit.

btw Lohkir would need to slay 12 monsters to get either his meele traits or magic traits up to 5. Yeah that wold happen rarely i think but maybe i raise it to 4 or 5 tokens so 16/20 would be needed to acieve that. (i kinda dislike the chest idea ^^" but thanks for your thoughts).

On a second though having the Campain in mind he might be really strong. Hmm i will figure something out.

If this was your first attempt at homebrew, you seem to be doing pretty well. By the way, I am a far cry from being the truly experienced player. I just do lots and lots of homebrew. (I am a game maker myself who stumbled upon FFG during one of my researches and I fell in love with their games) Some forum players will even call me a greenhorn So those are just my opinions, you could be better off leaving them as they are if you feel good about them. Like I said, it's all about individual group play styles.