I am brand new to the custom Descent character scene, and after reading some of the cool ideas in this forum I decided to try one of my own.

Now I don't have access to the original rules for creating custom characters as every link to them seems to be broken. I tried to make him as balanced as possible within his concept based on looking at the original characters and those posted here.

Basically he is a risk vs. reward type character, who can give great benefits to himself and his allies at great peril to the mission if his ability is mistimed and he dies. I wanted a way for him to regain the health slowly, and wanted it to be necessary that he do so by mixing it up in combat rather than just spending fatigue.

Any constructive criticism is much appreciated, thank you for your time.

FFG's published hero creation rules can be found near the bottom of the Descent Support Page , but I don't recommend using them; they don't actually allow for very much customization, they're hard to use, and they've got some significant balance issues. My own hero editor can be found here , on BoardGameGeek.

That's a very good combination of attributes; higher than average stats, plus completely focused traits and skills. Neither FFG's rules nor my editor allow that combination, ignoring abilities (though it's only a tiny amount over budget in both cases), nor does any official hero have an attribute line like that. You should probably consider lowering his stats or splitting up his traits and skills.

As for the ability, it's not clear when he's supposed to choose to activate the first part...also, since the effects expire at the end of the turn, he would normally only be able to boost one hero's attacks (or all heroes' Guard orders during the overlord's turn). Not sure if that's what you meant.

However, sacrificing 1 wound for both +1 damage and +1 range, even if it only affected a single attack, is a respectable ability; that's more than a fatigue will generally get you (though it depends on whether he has to choose to activate it before or after an attack roll), and it doesn't count against your limit of 5 power dice per attack. If he can boost all heroes' attacks for an entire round, that's exceedingly powerful.

The 2 surges to recover a wound is going to be heavily dependent on the weapon he's using. With a shop weapon, he'll have trouble rolling a lot of surges, and may need some for damage, so he may not be able to use it a lot; but with a silver or gold weapon, he'll be rolling more dice, and have excess damage more often, which will probably allow him to trigger it a lot more. On a typical hero, it still might be relatively minor, but it's got very strong synergy with his other ability.

On the whole, I think we can safely say this hero is much stronger than average; possibly even game-breakingly good, depending on how his ability is really supposed to work.

This is exactly the kind of feedback I wanted. I hadn't realized the wording on his ability could be misinterpreted.

Would a reduction in Armor be appropriate? Or lower health? As for the 3 dice/skills in melee, nothing else really seem appropriate. I suppose I could alter it so he had dice in ranged and a skill in subterfuge.

With these changes your creator gives him a rating of 348/360 if I count losing a wound for command (but the possibility of getting it back) equal to having command all the time.

My intent for his ability was to have a powerful group buff at a high cost, that would rely on proper coordination and timing on Olaf's part. Loosing health could be a detriment if the Overlord can capitalize on it, and he is worth a lot if he dies. Using it to kill all the monsters will leave him no way of regaining the health until the next fight, using it too early might mean he can be ganged up on and killed because of the wound loss. If it is still too powerful now that I think I have clarified the wording, what would you do to balance it?

If you want it to be high risk / high reward, you could consider adding something like this to the ability:

"For any hero that dies this round while within the Command radius, the heroes lose 1 extra Conquest token."

(That wording does have some ambiguity, but I'm not going to worry about finding the perfect language for an idea you may simply reject.)

Frozencore said:

I think you's find that Antistone was suggesting several means of toning Olaf down, not suggesting all of them at once are required (you have lowered stats, split traits and split skills - I suggest you could easily keep the traits focused with slit skills and the lowered stats and still have a reasonable hero - once we fix the special ability).

How about this for another way of going about what you are trying to achieve (or close, but slightly different?
"At the start of his turn Olaf may spend 1 wound to create a XXXX token on any hero or remove a XXXX token from any hero to heal 1 wound. If Olaf dies all XXXX tokens are removed from all heroes.
XXXX tokens give +1 range and +1 damage. XXXX tokens may not be exchanged."

This allows him to boost the the hero party a little bit each turn, but it also is cumulative, until he dies at least. He can also 'reabsorb' the tokens instead of giving them out.
I would think seriously about reducing his base wounds to 12 in this case though, because he needs to be reasonably killable by the OL - as it stands with a couple of healing potions he can drip-feed strength to the party, making it incredibly powerful, and healing himself up with potions.
Perhaps something like
12/4/1/4, 3CT, 3Melee traits, 2 Combat, 1 Rogue skills.
Such a hero can be made reasonably hard to kill with chainmail, a 1H weapon and Shield and Ghost Armour/RoP etc, but is not quite as difficult for the OL to make a concentrated effort on as a 16/1 or 16/2 hero.

Alternatively allow him to place more tokens but the tokens are removed when they give a bonus?
"At the start of his turn Olaf may spend up to 3 wounds to create up to 3 XXXX tokens on any hero or remove XXXX tokens from any hero to heal wounds, both at the cost of 1 wound per token.
XXXX tokens may be removed to gain +1 range and +1 damage for an attack and cannot be exchanged."

XXXX, of course, being your unique token type. "Inspiration" tokens perhaps, or "exhortation"...

It is still a very powerful ability.

I like that both your suggestions are trying to keep in theme of what I would like him to be; a reckless leader. By your comments, I am guessing you both think his ability is still too powerful.

I'm just concerend that tacking on another negative to his ability would make him even more of a detriment to the team. He already costs a heafty 4 conquest when he dies compared to Steelhorns and Sir Valadir who are only 3 for the same statline. I would imagine that going full-out would be rare considering it costs him almost 1/4 of his starting health (or exactly 1/4 if I reduce him to 12). Any damage on him would make the choice very difficult, as he could easily be taken down by a couple monsters or traps afterward.

That is supposed to be the catch, do I risk killing myself so we can defeat the monsters this round, or do we wait and risk not doing enough damage to them and die on their turn?

I can see the token idea working, but I am worried that it might be too complicated for such a small text box or for someone who just picked up the character(to be fair it is Descent so that might be unfounded). I like the second token idea much more than the first for my initial concept, but I can also see the first, slower approach more like him gradually working up his allies into a frenzy. My only issue with the tokens is that I think it takes some of the skill and gratification out of timing the ability properly. If they just remain on the characters he can buff them whenever he pleases rather than in combat (for the risk) and they can use them at their own leisure.

Looking at comparable abilities for example: if it were to be changed to just regular Command it would be up all the time and wouldn't cost you any wounds. In fact if I were to just make up the same character with Command instead in the FF character creator or the one Antistone made that would put him as underpowered in relation to their criteria.

Is it that he can pump it all the way to +3 in one round? I just can't see that happening all the time, because of the high cost. The intent was that it would scale well into the later tiers of the game or even in RtL.

Thank you for all your input so far, keep it coming!

Frozencore said:

Partly it's the complication. Trying to simplifying it in general is good.

But mostly, yes it's the power. You are vastly overrating the cost. That's one healing potion and 1 MP (fatigue if necessary). And +3 +3 is a huge boost to one character, let alone up to the entire party for a round. Consider a blast weapon for example...
Frankly I would expect pumping all the way to +3/+3 whenever there is a tough monster, or a good AoE opportunity. The bonus is easily worth the cost for even a single attack if it results in monsters killed instead of not-killed (therefore saving hero actions).
Note, for example, that two SoB skills which are generally considered to be somewhat overpowered have the (mage) hero able to sacrifice two wounds for an entire extra attack, twice per turn, and 1 wound for 2 extra surges, twice per attack, respectively ( Koll's Mark and Saj's Mark respectively). Now these are even more useful in an Advanced Campaign than they would be in vanilla, due to much tougher monsters being common, but they give you some baseline - except that they are generally thought to be overpowered and/or undercosted!
As an example, in my hero campaign we have Astarra with Koll's Mark. She regularly, and I mean more often than not, blows 4 wounds per turn for her extra two attacks (Running, with two attacks along the way to clear obstructions...) She also dies alot (especially as the next weakest hero has 4 armour and a Crystal Shield and stands at the back) but with what she achieves it is so worth it!

I also think that you are overestimating the skill factor in the timing. Frankly, it's pretty **** easy. Just have that hero go before any other heroes who will be fighting this turn. That often happens with the melee hero anyway since he tends to have to hit the nearby monsters and clear room for the others to get their best targets/shots.

The high CT value and difficult to kill thing is also why I suggested taking him down to a 12/1 for 3CT. He is then a middling hero, which means his loss is not so bad for the heroes, his kill not so difficult for the OL and the skill factor actually increases for the heroes in trying to get that delicate balance of keeping him alive while getting the best out of his ability (that is also one of the reasons for the compounding 1/turn bonus - the heroes increasingly need to protect this guy, which is it's own skill factor).

I don't think tokens are too complicated. Indeed, in some ways they are simpler than your original idea (you don't need to remember whether Olaf has activated his bonus and if so how much - not having a 'memory state' is a staple of this game).

Frozencore said:

But Lord Hawthorne, Laughlin Buldar, and Karnon all have 4 conquest for the same wounds and armor (they're expansion heroes). 16/1 is right on the cusp, where you need some extra advantage (usually a stat boost, but an extra powerful ability also works) to make up for being worth 4, but you also need some extra disadvantage to make up for being worth only 3. That's why it gets a default conquest value of 3.5 in my editor, and can then be rounded (or modified by an ability) either up or down. The FFG rules also give you extra BP for being 16/1 and costing 4, or charge you extra BP for being 16/1 and costing 3.

I have come to believe that Command is somewhat underpriced in the last version of my editor. Probably at least 20 BP underpriced, actually, and possibly more. Though who knows what I'll think a month from now.

As for the ability's comparative power to simply giving Command, I'm really not sure. If it was simply "sacrifice 1 wound to get Command for a round," that would clearly be worse, since you're strictly worse off (by a wound) on the rounds you use it, and strictly worse off (by a rank of Command) on the rounds you don't. Though even that would still be quite a respectable ability by the usual scale; maybe around 40-50 BP, near the value of a skill?

Allowing up to 3 ranks is certainly better than allowing only 1...not obviously better than having Command 1 all the time, but not obviously worse, either. I'd say probably worse overall, but not by a huge margin.

And 2 surges to recover a wound is not a negligible effect, especially in combination with the first part. It could maybe be priced at around 20-30 BP in my editor if it were a perk.

I also agree with Corbon that deciding when to use this ability, and justifying it's use, is not very hard. If using the ability is (statistically) going to result in at least 1 extra kill, then it's pretty much automatically worth it, even if you need to sacrifice the maximum of 3 wounds (because it saves you an action later to finish off the monster, and means the monster gets at least one fewer attacks against you). Plus, if the extra damage allows you to spend surges on healing yourself, that offsets the cost and also makes it automatically worth it.

So I imagine you'd probably want to pump it up to maximum on the first round of every new area, plus any time you're taking on an especially tough monster (like a boss), unless you're confident that you're already going to overkill everything.

What I meant by "skill" of timing his ability it would be more about when in the fight to use it rather than when in the turn order. If you were currently at 9 wounds pumped all the way to +3 and your party didn't manage to kill all the monsters...well you are in trouble. Maybe I am overestimating the decision. I am definitely considering lowering his health to 12 to fit the risk aspect of the character. My original idea was for him to have a large health pool so he could use his ability more often, but that seems to be a bad idea.

Health potions certainly are an issue. The idea was that he would hurt himself, a more valuable resource than fatigue, and that he would be required to fight in combat to remove the negative effects of his group buffs. What if he actually placed tokens on himself? Something that would function sort of like poison tokens. They would lower his max wounds and the only way he has to remove them would be to use the surge secondary ability.

Or, if this is simpler. On him the tokens are -1 wound, but he can give them to his allies when he hits (or with surges, etc.), and on them they are +1/+1. I'm not sure exactly what the limits and such will have to be for this, but it is another way to go.

Basically Olaf+health potions=too easy, and I'm trying to figure a way around it.

What if you let him spend 2 surges to regain 1 wound token but said that he could not be healed by any other means?

Frozencore said:

I'm not sure that's true. Fatigue is generally easier to restore than health, but it can also do more things, and spending a fatigue at the right time will frequently save you a lot more than 1 health in the long run. Additionally, fatigue is already used for lots of efficiency-boosting things, but allowing the hero to use health offensively in addition to his normal fatigue use increases the amount he can do on a single turn ...and considering how deadly combat in Descent is, doing lots of stuff at once is a really big deal.

Wounds and fatigue are used very differently, so it's hard to compare them directly; there are times you'd happily give up wounds for an equal amount of fatigue, and also times you'd happily give up fatigue for an equal amount of wounds. But if you're designing this based on the premise that spending a wound for a rank of command is significantly less powerful than spending a fatigue for a rank of command, you might want to reevaluate that premise.

Vitality potions are generally considered better than healing potions, even when they restore equal amounts.

Antistone said:

Which is why I have always had him at a relatively low number of fatigue, to try and limit the ability to use both all the time. The reason why I said I considered wounds to be more valuable than fatigue, was because that was my intent (also it's just plain cool). Sure, it is hard to really equate wounds to fatigue, but characters can perform their tasks without any fatigue (though less efficiently). Once they reach no wounds, however, they give up their conquest (the "true" cost of wounds is loosing the game) which on Olaf is reasonably high even if it is on the "cusp." Unfortunately, getting wounds back from health potions makes the prospect of dying from using the ability much less likely, which is certainly a flaw, and certainly makes him more able to perform overly well in situations when he has a number of both health and vitality potions available.

While I value your input, since it is clear that you know a great deal about Descent, I find that in your posts you are more likely to pick apart my wording and jump on to nitpick things I have said rather than come up with an elegant solution to the command/wounds problem. I am sure you can help me create an ability that is both interestingly unique and balanced, within the context and flavor of the character, and that is the type of input I would rather receive.

mahkra said:

Yes, that was something I had considered as well. Initially I had dismissed it as being too harsh, as I thoght it might be too difficult to keep him alive even if he never sacrificed his own wounds. Especially in the earlier part of the game, as Antistone said, it would be difficult to generate enough surges. Maybe it isn't that bad, though, as I haven't tested that idea yet.

How do you feel about the idea of tokens that function to lower his max health? The only way to remove said tokens would be the secondary ability, so the more he would use the buffing power the more he would be putting himself into a life "debt." Either his secondary ability would function as it is now, or the whole thing could be tied into a token passing mechanic that are negative health for him and positive damage for his allies (similar to what Corbon suggested).

something like this for the first idea (haven't done anything with his stats):

I don't know exactly how to word the token passing way yet, but I am working on it to make the whole thing be as clear and simple as possible.

Hopefully this would make it so health potions would become a less viable way of making him an infinite buff machine, which isn't what I wanted when I first conceived the character. Are "bloodlust"/"frenzy"/"inspiration" tokens as a means of limiting its use a move in the right direction?

More ideas are always welcome.

"Olaf dies if his Bloodlust equals or exceeds his wounds."

Based on the description before the image, I'm guessing "wounds" means current, not maximum? Assuming you mean his current wounds, I think this makes the ability significantly more interesting. Also, the command ability only lasts until the end of the round, but the Bloodlust tokens remain until removed by spending surges, correct? (Or hero death, of course.)

mahkra said:

Correct, hopefully the wording makes that clear? Though perhaps I should clarify the "remaining wounds" and that tokens are lost upon death, unless the rulebook already states it...time to check.

Edit: "lingering effect" tokens are indeed lost upon death, so it isn't just common sense, it's in the rules so no need to clarify that particular part.

Frozencore said:

Oh, I wasn't really questioning whether the tokens were lost upon death. I was verifying that while the command ability is temporary, the tokens are persistent.

For what it's worth, I liked his hero ability way better the way you had it originally, I'd say forget the "blood lust" idea. I think the risk/reward concept working with the Command 3 (or even 2) is brilliant, but the blood lust concept just kind of neutralizes it, and I would probably tend to just not play him because it's too much of a pain in the "neck". How about limiting it to Command 2, which is still powerful, especially if it affects the entire party for each attack, potentially..? Intuitively, I'd say that 12/3/1/4 might work, and keep him focused with 3 melee traits and maybe 2 melee and 1 subterfuge skill, to not get too far away from who he is..

Schmiegel said:

Good to hear that you like it! I was really trying to create an ability that was very unique, which I guess why it is hard to balance. What do you mean when you say that bloodlust "neutralizes" it? It might be me not finding the best wording, but essentially it works the same as loosing health, except for the fact that the only way to get back the health he uses for command is to use surges. When I initially created the ability I didn't think people would be so apt to try and break it with health potions. The tokens were the only way I could think to make him be able to regain normal damage with potions, but only get self inflicted damage back from his secondary ability.

I plan to change his traits so he is all melee in the future.

Thanks for you input!

Sorry that wasn't very clear. What I meant by "neutralizing" it was that I think you are onto something good (very good....brilliant, even) the way you have Olaf's hero ability originally, with your first posting of him. It is straightforward and simple, which is good. If you look at most of the hero abilities, the vast majority are pretty straightforward, and I feel they work best that way. I think that if you stray too far from what started out as a brilliant idea (by excessively fretting about players "breaking" the hero by abusing healing potions, for example) then you may lose what was best about him in the first place, if that makes sense.

Maybe if you leave him at 4 CT, then those times when he is killed will bring a better payoff for the Overlord player, because even stocking up on health potions isn't always going to save him.

I'm not saying my opinion is necessarily the correct one, either. The points others have made are certainly valid, I don't argue that. But this is supposed to be about fun, and game play is more fun for me if a hero's ability is fairly basic and simple. If it gets overly fiddly, then that becomes something of a distraction and decreases the "fun factor", for me at least. That's what I was trying to get at. That's just my take on the situation.

King Olaf would work for me at 4 CT, with his original hero ability, 12/3/1/4 stats, 3 melee traits (dice), 2 melee skills and 1 subterfuge skill. I also think I would limit him to adding Command 2. It seems like Command 3 is just a bit much. It's sort of a tough call as to whether he should be 4 CT as opposed to 3 CT. But if you're concerned about players breaking him with health potion abuse, keep him at 4 to compensate.

The bloodlust tokens are a very, very interesting concept. But only 2 surges to one of these tokens is way too less: As he gets multiple command for one turn, he won't need his surges to increase damage in that turn, but he will be able to most of the bloodlust tokens in the same turn. Think about the devastating outcomes if he has a silver or even gold weapon, takes command 3 and attacks a small monster like a beastman or a cobold with his first attack. He will be able to neutralize all bloodlust tokens, but the rest of his party will be highly pushed by command 3 and wipe out every enemy in the area.

I think it would be better to increase the number of necessary surges to 3 or even 4. Or maybe even better: You limit the number of bloodlust tokens that can be deleted to one per round. Or you say that he has to take a rest order to delete two bloodlust tokens (he has to calm down).

Moreover, Schmiegel is right when he says that command 3 is too much. I think command 2 is mighty enough.

Graf said:

While you may be right that command 3 is a bit much, I will have to disagree that two surges is too few. With his current incarnation (with 2 melee dice) it is impossible to get enough surges in 1 round without skill cards to heal every bloodlust token with a silver weapon and nearly impossible with gold ~.1%. On average with a gold weapon he removes ONE token a turn. Maybe it is because I only have the base game and and RtL, but there are no weapons that give enough dice to make it even remotely possible to get all 3 back in one round.

All dice have sides with surges on it, so he will have (depending on the weapon he uses) between 4 to 7 dice that could possibly roll surges – even more if he spends fatigue or if he upgrades his traits. Moreover, you should keep in mind what happens if he picks a skill that offers him free surges. You can be sure that he will pick this skill in RTL.

And don't forget that he doesn't have to delete all tokens in one single attack. He can at least attack two times per turn, even more with the right skills. If he spends two surges per attack (and thats not much), he is able to give his party Command 2 for free. That's too powerful.

Just take some dice, roll them and count how many bloodlust tokens he could in one turn.

The wording of his ability is a bit unclear, I would write it thislike as a alternative(to make it a bit risky):

At the start of Olaf's turn, he might place up to 3 Bloodlust tokens on himself. Each token grant Command 1. At the beginning of his next turn remove all bloodlust tokens from him and deal damage that ignores amor equal to the amount of removed tokens to him. 2 surges: gain 1 lifepoint.

Here's a slight variation of Morthai's suggestion, with more difficult healing:

At the start of Olaf's turn, he may place up to 3 Bloodlust tokens on himself. Each token grants Command 1 . At the start of his next turn, remove all Bloodlust tokens, dealing 1 poison damage (ignoring armor) for each token removed. <SS> : Remove 1 poison token.

Graf said:

I both rolled out the dice and calculated the statistics mathematically, did you? By both rolling and by simple math I got an average of a little under 1 health per attack with a gold weapon. Each dice has a single surge on 2/6 sides for melee weapons, and odd numbers of surges are lost, making it even harder to get wounds back. Lets say we do a battle action, that is <2 on average. Conversely with the same action he could have done 8 more damage by not using the surges to heal himself. That's a pretty heafty chunk to lose, especially considering that damage could have killed the monster anyway. Sure he can take the one skill that gives you free surges, but that would be at the expense of another good skill like Leadership or Knight, a fair trade in my opinion.

Morthai/mahkra I like your suggestion, as it is certainly easier to keep track of. It is, however, less risky than the current method as the damage right now can only be healed by surges, and in your suggestion it can be healed by health potions. The issue that is really hindering the clarity of the ability is lack of space on the card. I know what I want it to be, but I am limited in the amount of words I can use to describe the ability.

Essentially: At the begining of his turn Olaf my choose to place up to three Bloodlust tokens on himself to gain an equal amount of Command. The Command lasts until the end of the round, but the Bloodlust tokens remain. When his remaing wounds are equal or less than his Bloodlust tokens Olaf dies. Spend 2 surges to remove 1 Bloodlust token or to regain 1 wound.