I divided the characters in categories, for starting a new campaign with four characters. Pick one of each category. What will be your pick?

Gandalf

Bilbo

Legolas

Dís

Aragorn

Beravor

Eleanor

Arwen

Elena

Gimli

Balin

Can you also guess what the categories are?

I would choose Gandalf, Legolas, Eleanor, and Arwen (though Elena was a close second in the last category).

I am quite intrigued by your categories. The only thing I can find so far is that there is at least one character from the base set as well as the expansion in each category.

What are you aiming for dividing as such? Flavor & personal preference or role? If the first one, well, you do you If second one, care to elaborate on your basis for such divisions?

Given the choices above, I would've go the fellowship route - Gandalf, Legolas, Aragorn and Gimli

If I had to take a guess... second category is your main monster killers. Third seems to be your all-rounders. And the last is your support/tank characters. I can't quite figure out the first category. Inspiration generation, maybe?

But anyway, my recommendations just for fun: Gandalf, Dis, Aragorn, and Arwen.

@Annette Soleil almost correct!

1st: Inspiration in combination with a lot of possibilities at higher level

2nd: Killers

3d: Main explorers/sprinting/All-round

4th: Support

We chose Gandalf, Legolas, Aragorn, Balin. We encountered two problems:

- Almost no inspiration

- Not enough support (healing, transporting, strikes)

Any ideas which character(s) to replace with which?

Replacing Aragorn with Beravor might work. If you're using that slot as your main explorer/sprinter, Aragorn's ability won't get as much usage, since he'd spend a lot of time distant from the rest of the party in many scenarios. Beravor would get more usage out of her ability if you keep her locked into Pathfinder for much of the campaign. Paths Unseen can be really useful to pick up stragglers as well.

I don't have my copy on hand right now, so I don't remember what Balin does off the top of my head. But I know Arwen has a built in healing ability if that's something you're really struggling with. If the problem stems from not being able to kill monsters quickly enough, replacing Balin with Gimli might help. Gimli can tank some of the damage while lending some extra fighting power to kill things faster. You won't have much in the way of healing though, but you'd likely take less damage overall. But if most of the damage you're taking is unavoidable, and not because you need more help killing monsters, a dedicated healer like Arwen might be better. Elena is just good support all around as well, if you want more generalist support.

Not sure how to handle the inspiration problem honestly. That's something I frequently run into myself. I haven't looked too closely at all of the new cards, is there something among the new classes that could help?

In regards of inspiration, Elena is the queen of inspiration-sharing. So probably that will be your solution.

Gimli, well never really had good runs with him in the team. I guess he could function perfectly with a good support like Beravor or Elena around.

Dís can also do a lot of damage, so that would be a better option instead of Gimli. Also, Eleanor is kind of a combination of Aragorn/Beravor.

So I guess the team for me/us would be Aragorn/Eleanor, Legolas, Gimli/Dís, Beravor/Elena

21 hours ago, TrumpetTrev said:

@Annette Soleil almost correct!

1st: Inspiration in combination with a lot of possibilities at higher level

2nd: Killers

3d: Main explorers/sprinting/All-round

4th: Support

We chose Gandalf, Legolas, Aragorn, Balin. We encountered two problems:

- Almost no inspiration

- Not enough support (healing, transporting, strikes)

Any ideas which character(s) to replace with which?

If those are your categories (and I'm assuming you are considering default roles and gear), I think Balin belongs in the Explorer category and Aragorn belongs in the Support category. Delver has a ton of Sprint and is uniquely good in darkness, making him a master at exploring caves. Captain on the other hand really thrives off being close to other heroes and providing support in battle.

As for generating inspiration, Elena/Musician is very good and has excellent healing cards to boot (Lay of Twilight can actually remove 4 fear and 4 damage for a total of 8 cards each time it is used!). She might be the single best support in the game. Traveller is very good at generating inspiration for others as with Over Ridge and Rill. I usually keep it card prepared until the entire map is revealed. Pathfinder can be very good at generating inspiration as well with Trailblazer. If you keep it prepared and take advantage of all the Sprint cards in Beravor's deck and the Pathfinder role, you not only generate a lot of inspiration, but you also get a lot of scout from Beravor's personal ability. Dis has Strength of Thrain which is decent at generating inspiration and Balin has Misty Mountain Cold which isn't bad either. Lot's of other roles have cards that generate decent inspiration too.

If you find you are struggling, I would suggests playing around with different gear and roles as well. For instance, I think Balin is much more potent in combat with the Sword/Shield than the Hatchet/Shield. And I think Gimli with the Hammer is better than Gimli with the Axe. Legolas makes a pretty good Pathfinder since he can make better use of Ambush if he's using a ranged weapon.

EDIT: And to answer your question, I would switch Legolas to Pathfinder so he could pick up inspiration from sprinting and pick up the Ambush cards to get free attack actions. I would also swap Balin for Elena to get inspiration for your party and get some good healing.