Where are you getting the special abilities from?

Is there any attempt at balancing the characters? Do you have a benchmark that you measure them against?

Archer Emiya.
Morph doesn't work this way. Morph allows some of RWBGY dice to be changed about but specifies which dice. Heroes don't have those dice (their weapons do). Since the dice change depending on weapon, you don't have a way to make the morph mechanism work. Further, Morph fundamentally breaks down for heroes because a hero's effective combat power is related to what equipment, and especially what level of equipment, they have. If morph was to work on hero equipment then their actual equipment would more or less cease to matter - and to some extent, so would the level of the equipment. BY is just as powerful a RG if they all morph.
Frankly, the +2/+2 for having a bow is pretty powerful on it's own.
The CT cost is too high. 12W/1A is a 3CT value. Don't make the mistake of bumping up CT values to balance overly powerful abilities or stats. If you do that you end up making a stupidly lopsided hero that is really cool to use for 5 minutes then loses you the game, or doesn't. Nobody will enjoy it because if the OL can take advantage of the CT imbalance he will crush the heroes early. If he can't then the heroes get a super powered guy and it's too easy for them and too frustrating for the OL. Balance is better.
Btw, giving 2M/2R dice is only very, very marginally better than 3 dice total (if it is better at all) and probably worse than just 3 dice in 1 trait, so don't try to overbalance because of that

Fake Assasin.
Fix the CT value. It should be 2, probably. Then this would be a reasonable and fairly interesting character.

Beserker Heracles.
Sweep is extraordinarily powerful and he gets it pretty much all the time. I'd that entirely and change the CT to 4. Or the Ironskin+Unstoppable etc and change the CT to 4. Again, you seem to be trying to balance too powerful hero with CT, which is a bad approach.

Caster Medea.
Fix the CT value. It should be 2, probably.
Far too many special abilities. Sorcery 1 is most of a full skill on it's own. Say Sorcery 3 is two skills worth, + Necromancy. An average special ability should be worth approximately 1 skill, not 3! Now both special abilities and skills vary a bit, but this is still waaaay overpowered. Again, you seem to be trying to balance stupidly overpowered hero with high CT value. Don't.

Lancer Cuchalain
Overall, not bad. Interesting hero, with a powerful but restricted ability. I'd lower his speed to 4, for two reasons. First, on general principle, stats should aim to combine (W/4) to around 12 if possible. Heroes with weaker abilities or bad skill/trait spreads should get the higher stats, not good quality specialists like this guy. Second, as a melee hero he will often want to wear the heavier armours that restrict speed anyway - specifically chainmail, so it isn't a great loss.
If you want him faster to discourage using the heavy armours, then lower fatigue so that he has a finesse weakness (and that will reduce his undodgability as well).

Rider Medusa
Not bad now. I know this one you have submitted before and has been discussed already. No surprise then that it is better balanced than the others.
A 12/0 would normally by 2 CT but the defensive Shadowcloak ability makes bumping up to 3CT quite reasonable, especially since she has high stats overall.
Good job.

Saber Arturia
Not too bad. I think that there is too much in her special though. An entire good skill (Blessing = Command 1) + one of the best existing special abilities (Varikas' gain 1F per turn) + the bulk of another decent special ability (Ispher). At the very least, make it one fatigue or 1 wound. I still think that's overpowered, but a 12/2 for 4CT needs a little bit of overpowering going for it as it is on the low end of the usual scale.

.

Can tell that most of your characters are runner + something. Eg: Runner+Mage or Runner+Melee

I would say that Archer is way powerful. Especially if you are talking vanilla dungeons, the OL will suffer badly for that super boost at the start of the map.

Assassin on the other hand is way too weak. As an OL, I would crush the party mercilessly via this character.

Heracles seems to be better balanced, but like what Corbon said, Sweep is a very powerful move that should not be freely given like this, especially when you have already given him so many other immunities.

Medea leans on the weak side. Don't think my players would choose her at all, if given a choice.

Lancer is okay.

Though like what Corbon said about Medusa having gone through several tweaks already, I still feel that Stun is something that is superb and underestimated. Free stuns would sound gay to my group, and they would probably ban her, since she is also a super runner + cloaker.

Saber is way too strong. Starting armor of 2, with +1 H +1F... Too strong.

P.S: Colors really set the mood. Try finding harder for the colored pictures of those characters. As a last resort, you can always take screenshots of the characters from the actual anime. They will look much better than your current black and white.

Wanderer999 said:

I don't think Stun is really all that powerful. Named monsters are immune to it, and normal monsters are usually dying from a single attack anyway, so the Stun is irrelevant. As for master monsters, the OL can use a Rage card to move and make 2 attacks even when stunned. (I usually use Rage cards on master monsters anyway, because named bosses are targeted by the party and often die in one round, so a hero having Stun doesn't even require the OL to drastically alter his tactics.)

EDIT: It's much more powerful on AoE attacks, but we're discussing a melee character here.

There's nothing stopping the player from getting blast and breath weapons (Esp if they are playing the complete vanilla set with a blast weapon already purchasable from the town shop at the start of game)

And stun does affect master monsters quite badly... I find many a times I can do so much more with my master melee monster, only to have it stunned and unable to reach the heroes. Enrage cards and the such are very powerful hero killers and are wasted on stunned master monsters if u use them to counter the stuns, not to mention the stuns are free and ever-coming. No cost, no requirement, not even late game.

A Rage card isn't wasted on the stunned master monster if you would've used it on the master monster anyway. And Rage completely negates the stun; you still get to move the monster up to its normal speed and make two attacks, so you're really losing nothing.

If you're giving your blast weapon to the melee hero, then the magic hero, who has extra black dice, doesn't have it. Why not just give the blast weapon to the magic hero and let him kill the monsters, rather than having the melee hero stun them but leave them on the board? (Also, with no black dice, the stun-inducing blast attack will not have a large radius.)

I suppose stun could be an easy-to-use safety net for heroes that play poorly, but I think that heroes that play well wouldn't benefit greatly from it. Killing monsters is better than stunning them, and heroes that play well are already killing the monsters that matter before those monsters have a chance to do any real damage. If the heroes are vastly improved by one hero having Stun, they probably needed the boost to compete anyway.

I think you meant Enrage because Rage only grants double attack. (quickshot)

Furthermore, the way my group and I play, if a master monster is stunned, it only has 1 half action left. If an OL plays Rage on it, the master monster only gets 2 attacks, but still cannot move due to the stun. If an OL plays Enrage on it, the master monster can only move 1 time of its speed and 1 attack due to the stun, which takes away half of a target's actions. Lastly, even if you play the cards normally on a stunned master monster, there is only ONE such card (Enrage) and the hero on the other hand, has unlimited stuns. The OL can only do it just once and have to wait for his next deck cycle, which might never come if the heroes are fast.

And yes at the starting of the game, blast 1 is so much more powerful when given to a free-stun character as compared to a normal mage. This is because the basic shop's blast weapon has very weak damage (almost all blast weapons have weak damage compared to other weapons of their tier) and a mage with the basic shop blast weapon will probably never kill anyone unless its a really weak creature like kobold etc. On the other hand, it grants an instant disable when paired with stun. The usefulness of an AoE mage compared to an AoE stunner in this case is too vast in usefulness to even compare.

P.S: Anyways, it could be that it's just my playgroup that finds free stuns a little too powerful, especially from starting of game. Perhaps your group and the general group doesn't feel that way.

Wanderer999 said:

In this respect, you are playing wrong.

Stun forces a Master monster to choose between moving or making an attack.
Rage gives a monster two attacks (4 with quickshot). Not quickshot, two attacks (4 with quickshot). A stunned master monster can choose the move option and then play a Rage card to get two attacks in addition to moving.

This is officially confirmed by the explanation of Lts (who can battle/run) using Rage/Charge.
GLOAQ
If the Overlord plays RAGE on a Lieutenant during a battle action, how many attacks does he receive - 3 or 4?
Two, actually. "Rage" reads: "Play when you activate a monster. That monster may attack twice during this activation (four times if it has Quick Shot)."
A lieutenant who has declared a Battle action may attack twice during his activation. "Rage" has no further effect - it is essentially granting the lieutenant an ability it already has. A much stronger play is to declare a Run action and then play "Rage," which would allow the lieutenant to move twice his speed and attack twice.

And I disagree overall with your early AOE weapon example. The mage should have either damage bonuses (Carthos, Blessing, Inner Fire etc), lots of fatigue for extra dice as needed or be using power potions or he shouldn't be using an AoE weapon.
Yes, if you are playing badly and are very weak then stun is useful. If you are playing halfway competently and have any sort of decent skill/ability then stun is mostly wasted since attacks should be killing monsters anyway.
OTOH is you tend to run into a lot of normal tier 3+ monsters then that stun could be vital.

Here's some possible rebalancings according to everyone's suggestions.

Not too sure what you guys thought Archer should become to become a more balanced character, or Saber for that matter.

So much better! Especially the highly upgraded pictures, I knew you could find better pics if you only searched harder.

I would say I am happy with Lancer and Assassin. Both seem nice enough. But for Heracles, with his unstoppable and ironskin he might still be too good a tanker with +2 armor and 16 health. As for Medea, like before, I find her very powerful. In my own humble opinion, I would say Sorcery 1 or 2 at most is enough.

I can do that with Medea pretty easily, though as far as Heracles goes, I was trying to go for a more myhtological approach of after he completes the 12 trials and gains immortality by just making him really tough instead of trying to fandangle some way of giving him undying. I thought maybe not allowing him to have most armor in the game would balance him out but maybe not? How do you see him becoming balanced. Also any tips for unbreaking Archer and Saber?

Thats for u to think and for us to comment

sagus said:

Do that with Medea and she will be fine. I assumed you didn't change her sorcery value because Wanderer thought her underpowered at first, but he seems to have mistyped...

Just the sweep thing entirely with Heracles and you get what you want. Or change it to cost 3 fatigue, or (like the contest hero posted recently by Wanderer) convert it to using both attacks of a battle action.

For Archer and Saber you had my comments earlier. For actual suggestions?
Archer - simply the morph entirely and lower CT by 1.
Saber - Make it 1 fatigue or 1 health. Or better yet, change it to allow her to swap 1 fatigue for 1 health, once, at the start of her turn. You could probably also change a combat skill to wizardry as anothe subtle bit of balancing that has only minor effect.

Corbon said:

Corbon said:

I'd just like to point out this is a somewhat inconsistent standard, here. I realize that a skill isn't a particularly precise unit of measure, and you did put Sorcery at only 2/3 of a skill, but Sorcery 1 isn't even CLOSE to Command 1 in power. IMO, Blessing is far above the skill power curve.

Command adds both damage and range (instead of making you choose), it works against targets with Ironskin, and it also gives its full bonus to all allies within 3 spaces . If there's even one ally that's usually in range, that probably already makes it noticably better than most skills (no skill gives +2 damage and +2 range, and the ones that are closest are attack-type limited). If, as I suspect, the average number of allies close enough to benefit is closer to 2, Command 1 might actually be better than Sorcery 3. That may be a stretch, but Sorcery 3 certainly isn't worth Command 2.

Though Sorcery 2 is also better than a lot of skills, so I'd guess your evaluation of Sorcery's value is pretty good...Blessing is just an outlier, and isn't good for skill comparison.

I also find it really interesting that people tend to flip out if they see a hero with 3 dice in every trait (heck, sometimes even just 2 dice in every trait), but a hero with Sorcery 3 (plus some trait dice besides) doesn't seem to evoke nearly the same reaction, even though a rank of Sorcery is noticably better than +1 die in every trait for most purposes. If Medea had traits of 3/3/6, instead of 0/0/3 + Sorcery 3, she'd almost certainly be significantly weaker overall. Anyone here who thinks that would be balanced?

Admittedly, resistance to having good dice in every trait seems to stem more from the fact that "FFG's heroes don't do it" than from any actual gameplay problem.

I think Saber would be considerably overpowered even if you dropped the health/fatigue regeneration entirely. Command by itself is a top-tier hero skill and you should have a noticeable drawback to compensate for it. Reducing both his speed and fatigue to 3 (in addition to losing both types of regeneration) might be enough.

If you want to keep the regeneration...regaining both 1 wound and 1 fatigue every round is probably about as good as Command, actually.

I don't know what Archer's supposed to do; his name and the second half of his ability suggest he's supposed to be a bow specialist, but morph and equal melee dice strongly suggest otherwise. I suggest you pick a direction.

If you want Archer to keep the Morph ability, you can turn it into something coherent by also letting him add a morph die to all attacks (so he gets all his normal dice for his weapon and traits, plus one die of his choice, which can potentially be used to change the attack's type). In my point-buy editor, the price on that is the rough equivalent of one extra skill, plus one extra die in every trait, which makes it another very powerful ability.

Wild Talent is Sorcery 1 + an extra dice vs traps.

Most of that use will be the Sorcery 1. That's why I suggested that Sorcery 3 be roughly equivalent to 2 skills.

Not all skills are equal, as you are well aware. Thats why Blessing rated 'good skill' rather than just 'skill'.

I'm trying to be very general here and keep things simple enough for less experienced people to follow. I guess I should have added "Wild Talent" in brackets after 'most of a skill'.

Otherwise, I agree completely with your suggestions.