Hi everyone, this time I just wanted to show you some characters I made using the official Descent Hero Maker and have some feedback about them. Since I'm a big dwarf fan, most of them are dwarves, but other races are not missing.

My very first creation was:

Unsatisfied with the absence of REAL dwarven tanks in the Descent world I made this perfectly legal character. I Switched 2 points of fatigue to a point of armor and 4HP, remaining with 10 full points to spend. 6 went to the dice, to make him a full melee fighter, while 4 where distributed on the skills. With 0 BP remaining, I took Defender giving him an actual 4 damage reduction on most circumstances! I tested it in campaign and he proved very powerful.

A variant yet to test is:

For this classical Dwarven Cleric/Tank a Magic skill was more flavorful than a Subterfuge. Hence the result. This time I got Healer at the 0-3 level.

Going on with the dwarven madness I had to do the "Dwarven King" styled character:

I had to give him Command 1 (Tactician 4-8), hence I had to save 4 points. First point was taken from the statline. Giving -3 fatigue, my character reached 11BP, while mantaining the tankish HP12 Armor3. With 7 points to spare I spent 4 on dice (in a dwarven fashionable way) and 3 on skills (well...kings must know something of everything after all). That's the result.

At this point I had figured some odd party with 4 dwarves sticking close to one another...I needed the Bard.

In a group of Dwarves she had to be the "runner". Hence maxed Fatigue and Speed (for a dwarf chassis, by the way...). Besides, the only two reasons for building a dwarven character is either giving it Armor3 or combining Fatigue6 with Armor2. I was already left with 7 BP so I couldn't rise any more stats. As a bard with (supposedly) high dexterity, I gave her an edge on Ranged and being a dwarf a single trait in melee. Split skills should be a must for any Bard flavored character on my opinion, so I gave her the Bard skill at a 0-3 level. This character is currently being used by a player during a campaign I'm mastering. She works quite fine. Her ability is very good and despite the low HP, she's tankish enough (but the fact I'm using the Spider Queen really helps me). Odd enough, she's not going to be the main runner of the party, since they decided to give the role to Jonas the Kind (who has base Fatigue4 and Speed5...now he has the Tiger Tatoo, he's really fast moving indeed).

What my Dwarven group still missed (I hadn't devised the Cleric at the time) was a caster. Since all guys were sticking together I decided a fine skill for the missing character would be Soldier...

I wanted the 9+ version of the Soldier ability, thinking the +1Armor would fit well with the already mighty Armor3 dwarves can access. Although I had to rise Armor by 1, I still had to gain BP in the statline creation step. I got everything from Fatigue, lowering it to 1. This slow character had 16BPs now. I recovered another BP by choosing Conquest 4 over 3 and with 17 BPs I could distribute 8 BPs among dice and skills. I gave him the same distribution of Jaes, since his flavor was somewhat similar, despite subterfuge skills being often a better choice for magic characters.

Last dwarf to come was the barbarian "slayer-style" dwarf (krutzbeck was still to exist).

Barbarian skill should only be given at 9+ on my opinion...and on a Dwarf it means reaching an awesome Armor of 6. I constructed the character exactly like the previous one, but dice were moved around and I preferred a 2 Fatigue, 2 Speed body to the odd 1 Fatigue, 2 Speed of Dargg. Hopefully, access to both Fighting and Subterfuge skills should make-up for his slowness.

Satisfied with the dwarves I went down to humans. Basically I wanted to test the Bard on those and the Assassin. First came the Bard.

Tied for the most powerful character I could obtain by the Editor (other cuncurring characters are the first two Dwarf tanks, expecially Darghor), this characte's statline has 15 points...leaving me with 6 points that got to 7 by choosing conquest 4. Dice and skills were distributed as per Kemlar, both being Bards. A absolute house on my opinion, and a legal one, on top of that.

Then the assassin.

With just a couple additional points on the statline (Speed for the assassin should be quick and Armor to represent his high dodge ability), I had still 9 points to distribute, which went easily to 10 by using the high Conquest bias. Three melee dice make him deadly enough and 2 Subterfuge Skills combined with a Fighting skills I believe give the right flavor to the character. One of my current players drew him with Kemlar when choosing characters for the campaign (we tried with each player choosing a character from 2 randomly selected sheets), but since Kemlar was the only shooter shooter available among the 8 characters drawn, Dark Jax ended up being botched. Otherwise I'm sure he would have been taken.

I've never been a great fan of the Elves, but I guess I had to try and make a rather good runner. Here she is.

The Runner ability is good only if you spend 0-3 points on it. If you spend more, you're lowering your stats so much, that after all you have no real benefit from the +1Fatigue and/or Speed. All I had to do was rise the elven base statline in Fatigue and Speed. With 7 points left I decided to get Conquest 3 so I could distribute dice and abilities in a better way. Two Ranged dice were due and a magic die always stacks well with the elven theme. I gave her the Fighting skill, instead of Wizardry, because I wanted her to be able to access Tiger Tatoo, Nimble, Shark Tatoo and Runner, which are all very good skills for a runner, especially for one with that ability.

Then I came to bestials. First one was a Centaur archress (my girlfriend wanted something like that).

There's only one reason to make a Bestial character...and it's having 20HP. I wanted to make it a good runner (after all, the lower part of the body is a horse!), so I had to rise that stat too...With only 7 BP points remaining I couldn't afford to rise the armor or fatigue, so I moved to Conquest. Giving Xantya a Conquest of 4 awarded me 2 good BPs, so I ended up with 9 BPs. I put 6 of them on Ranged, so that she would definitely be a Ranged powerhouse, than I split the skill with the remaining points. I decided that 0-3 level Soldier would be nice on the character. The +2 range is always nice on shooters and since this character has lots of movement she shouldn't have that hard of a time using to her advantage the ability.

Next I wanted an Ogre-style bodyguard. Some of you shall reconnize the guy in this sheet...

Bodyguard ability is good enough at 0-3 level, so I could make the characer, strong. Again, a Bestial MUST have 20HP (otherwise, make a human character, has more BPs...) and this time the character needed any extra armor possible, since it had to suffer wounds instead of someone else. To balance the stat bonuses, I lowered movement and fatigue according to tanks' traditions. With 10 BPs still in my pocket I gave him all the Melee dices he needed and distributed his skills in the way that best fitted a sturdy character. He was botched during my current campaign by the player ho drew him, but, well...the other character drawn was Truthseer Kel, which we believe to be absolutely the best spellcaster in the game.

Few other characters I made were Nimbles. Most of them were designed to get 9+ BPs abilities.

First one I made, I wanted to test the 9+ defender skill...

My idea was a jester creating chaos could impair the enemies attacking faculties. I gave her high movement, but lowered fatigue. I rised HP to 12, cause I knew I could regain 2BP by chosing a Conquest value of 3. With 8 points remaining I gave her Ranged oriented traits and skills. She looked OK to me...

Second was the maxi-healing fairy.

Again I started with the Nimble chassis, but this time I took an additional point, so I could spend 9 BP on dice/skills and max her Magic Trait. 5HP per portal look cool enough to me and she's not even that much statline-screwed.

Then came the Seer.

I like most the 4-8BP Seer ability. I opted for a cunning Gnome style. Rising HP and and movement left me with 12 points, rised to 14 by Conquest 3. With 10 BP to spend I gave the gnome 3 magic trait dice and 1 subterfuge and 2 wizardry skills, which are quite flavorful.

Last thing I wanted to test the Master skill at highest level.

Lowering fatigue and speed to 3 and rising to 1 the armor, I got 18BPs, rised to 19 by Conquest. 10 points to spend went with 3 Magic dice and skills according to the Goblin Shaman-Witch Doctor flavor. The ultra magic bomb was born. I actually allow players to roll the silver die with this character even on Vanilla descent...after all, that's all he has to it.

Did you make characters using the Descent Hero Maker? Did you enjoy it? What do you think of these characters?

Elric of Melniboné said:

Yes.

Meh, but I got some variations and balanced the availability of character archetypes after 'already used' heroes were removed from the pool for Advanced Campaigns. It served its purpose, but I had to deliberately not power up heroes and I still find them generally up in the top ranks of existing heroes when I use them, though not necessarily as good as the very best official heroes.
Look, the official create your own hero thing is badly designed. It is very easy to create overpowered or underpowered heroes, and is not even slightly internally balanced either. You stated in your other thread that you assume that because FFG is a serious company that stuff they release has been properly tested. Well, for Descent at least, it virtually never has been properly tested, and on available evidence usually hasn't been tested at all (at least by someone who isn't just a 'lets play fun' person, which is entirely the wrong attitude for a tester ). The special release heroes are not a good starting point for balancing, as you have already been told. For the most part they are outliers is some direction or other, as FFG tries to bring 'different' things to the table without making any effort for balance.

To be perfectly honest I didn't even get through the dwarves. You simply took a bad engine and tried to push it's limits everywhere. While that is conceptually fun (to see where something can get too) it doesn't make heroes worth mentioning.
What I did see would IME be very boring to play, either with or against.

I suggest you get Antistone's spreadsheet for hero creation as a balance tool. Between these heroes and the ones in the other thread, it seems clear that you are a long way off the community judgement for the value of things.
Just as an example, Antistone ran a thread where he got everyone (who was willing to answer) to value all the existing hero abilities. This gave him some sort of model on which to base costs that wasn't just based on individual experiences and biases, but a collective experience with mostly similar, but in some cases widely differing, views. I am quite certain he would also be most peoples vote for the best analyst on this forum, whether they agree with him or not.

Lastly, I'm not trying to come down on you or silence differing opinions or styles or anything. You are free to keep coming up and playing with heroes that any of us consider wildly unbalanced. But you asked for opinions and I'm giving them to you honestly.

PS Major error you made. Although it is not immediately apparent, it has been clarified that races are not supposed to raise or lower traits by more than one. It is actually indicated that the costs/bonuses are based on the number of traits raised lowered, not how much each trait was raised or lowered. For example, if you lower a trait by 2, that is still only one trait lowered.

A lot of your heroes, I think, are thus technically illegal even by this broken document.

Indeed...I see the use of the editor must have been clarified by some FAQ...as I and my friends read the document, we interpreted it completely another way around...Right now we're having pretty much fun and players (or other overlords) are not complaining, so be it...Since NOW we randomly characters, parties don't result ovepowered anyway...

...actually our first campaign was a disaster for the overlord, but we both misread many rules of the Advanced Campaign to players' advantage (bad translations on Italian rulebooks don't help), and players were allowed to choose freely the characters...the party was composed of Tahlia (who got Leadership as a starting skill...killer combo), my Darghor The Tank (with Tiger Tatoo), Kirga (with Pickpocket) and Jaes (with Battle Cry). The Beastman Lord forfeited at Silver Campaign Level...

...Hence we now characters randomly. Right now (due to a very, very odd drawing) I'm playing the Spider Queen against a party including two promo characters, Jonas the Kind, and Truthseer Kel (which I DO consider overpowered), Kemlar (the dwarven bard), which isn't half bad on my opinion, and Laughin Buldar. Right now I'm not having too much problems keeping them under control. Since characters are randomly chosen, I don't believe all characters require to be absolutely balanced. It's quite normal there are slightly better and slightly worse characters. It's up to the Overlord to slow down the stronger and target the weaker to gain XPs.

By the way, thanks for the reply!

PS-Is antistone hero generator the HeroGen v2.3?

Elric of Melniboné said:

It would appear so .

Thanks for the quick reply.

I like that hero editor. Nay bad on my opinion. Very well made, actually. I played a bit with it also...

Wouldn't take it as a standard for making heroes, though. After all, the game seems to have characters which are far more powerful than those made by the generator...which means that going a bit over the bounds of that generator wouldn't necessarily break the game (at least as it was meant by the designers). 17 out of 38 characters made by Fantasy Flight (without even taking into account Kel, Tobin, Jonas & the new guys) are "illegal" using that editor...which means it's not fully "balanced" to the actual game (or to what its designers consider it, by the way). A very, very nice tool, though, and I really deeply admire Antistone's amazing job in making it.

Corbon said:

Where has this been clarified?

The hero rules themselves are contradictory - they say that you can't raise a stat more than once, but don't say that you can't lower it more than once. They say that the BP you get are based on the number of stats lowered, but then their example is 2 stats raised and 4 stats lowered...which is impossible, unless they consider lowering a stat twice to be "2 stats lowered," because there are only 4 stats and they say you can't both raise and lower the same stat (even though that would cancel out in all ways and wouldn't hurt anything).

Of course, if you can lower a stat more than once, then we don't know the minimums for all stats, which is kind of a problem (in fact, by a strict reading, you can lower wounds below 8 and armor below 0 as long as you choose a race that doesn't start with those stats at those values).

Whether you can get BP for lowering a stat twice is fairly academic, since those hero creation rules really aren't worth using either way, but I'm not aware of any official clarification that has been made.

Elric of Melniboné said:

FFG's published heroes are generally considered to be highly variable in power; no one thinks that Red Scorpion and Ispher are as good as Kirga and Runewitch Astarra. If the editor values things remotely accurately, then it has to price some official heroes much higher than others.

Then, if you set the point limit so that all official heroes are affordable, then heroes produced with that editor are going to be consistently and significantly better than almost all official heroes - quite possibly better than absolutely all official heroes, since you can't expect the costs to be perfect , and hand-crafted heroes are going to look for the most power for the least cost.

You can do that if you really want to - just edit the BP limit on the params sheet. But I thought it would be much more reasonable to set the BP limit to the median cost of official heroes, not the maximum . That means that about half of the official heroes are legal under the editor (many can still be improved, in fact), and a lot of the others are only slightly over-budget, but the most powerful heroes are significantly over budget...because they are significantly better than most of the other official heroes.

Heroes hand-crafted in my editor are still probably better than the average official hero, because they're optimized to the point system being used, but it is my fond hope that it is NOT possible to make any hero as powerful as the strongest heroes FFG has published using the editor's default settings. Partly because a lot of people will reflexively cry foul if they see a hero that's both unorthodox and top-tier, even if some official heroes are still better, but also because I want a custom-made hero to be about as powerful as a hero you'd get in a typical game, not about as powerful as a hero you'd get if you were allowed to hand-pick your entire party from every hero FFG has ever published.

People let players choose their exact heroes when they want to handicap the overlord player, and therefore that level of power is not appropriate to a typical game. If you want to handicap the overlord when you're playing with custom heroes, you can do that by raising the BP limit.

And for the record, you can't reproduce most of FFG's published heroes using their custom hero rules, either. For some of them (e.g. Runewitch Astarra), you can't recreate their attribute lines even if you assume their abilities cost nothing; Landrec's actual hero ability is on the list, and he's still 5 BP over-budget if you recreate him optimally with those rules. So if your assumption is that everything FFG puts out is accurately balanced to the same standard...that doesn't just contradict the body of player experience, it contradicts itself .

You're absolutely right, Antistone. I know Descent Hero maker is made so that (even using it as I've done), strongest Descent Heroes are more powerful than custom-made characters. And I also comprehend that when making your hero maker you set the maximum BPs to a median in order to exclude players would obtain completely customized and perfectly purpose-made powerhouses.

I actually already played a bit with your editor and as I immediately noticed, rising BPs leads easily to far too powerful combos.

I repeat that I consider your editor to be a much better job than Fantasy Flight Games one.

The reason I made characters with the "official" hero maker is that my playing mates tend to accept better something that comes from the official publishers.

As for my completely homebrewed characters, since Descent ISN'T a balanced game, I try to make heroes that range from the average to the top-tiers (and I make them ultimately and completely for fun...I have a thing for making rules...). After my (previously described) campaign experience, I believe the "balance" in the game can come ONLY from having players randomly their characters. The characters I made with the editor are to be drawn, just like any other. Right now as a Overlord I'm facing Kel...an absolute monster, still, not all characters in the party are that power level, and the reason is simply that characters were randomly selected (chosen from 2 randomly selected, to be exact). Besides I mantain the number of Editor-made characters within the range of the 25% so that actually no more than 1 tends to be present on a single party.

Right now things are working pretty well and everyone is having his share of fun...which I believe to be the most important part when we talk about playing.

I compliment you again for your very good editor and thank you for posting on this topic with constructive arguments.

Elric of Melniboné said:

I don't know if I'd go that far. The official build-your-own-hero rules can't recreate official heroes, but they also have some major holes in them; they allow a hero that can make 7 Guard attacks in a single turn, or has noticably better defenses than the toughest published heroes, or has a top-tier ability like Command relatively cheaply. I suspect that I could use those rules to build a custom party that could outperform even a hand-picked party of FFG's published heroes (in vanilla; I've never played the advanced campaigns). Especially if you let me gain BP for lowering a stat more than once (always wondered what it would be like to play a hero with zero speed).

There's really no point to such an exercise, though, except to prove that legalistically following those rules is a bad idea.

So far I've tested two of the previous characters.

The first Darghor the Tank had a specific role and made it well in the party he was present (which was hand-picked, top-tiers party by the way). He wasn't more "useful" than Tahlia or Kirga and perhaps only slightly better than Jaes, who still had his own good points. The party was overpowered because characters were all hand-picked, a use we have since abandoned, but if I had to choose between Darghor and Tahlia (or Nanok, or Varikas, or Hawthorne), I wouldn't be so sure to choose the custom character.

Kemlar works pretty nicely, but so far has proven very far from being broken (the player was even whining at the beginning of the campaign...now he's more satisfied, but still I'm not that impressed). Aside from Kel (who's definitely broken, ok) the other party members are Laughin Buldar and Jonas The Kind and I don't believe Kemlar's doing much better than those. Actually, the character who's performed the best so far is Laughin Buldar (perhaps even slightly better than Kel), which I like on a design standpoint, but really don't believe to be an absolute powerhouse.

It's pretty clear that if you let players form a completely custom hand-picked party, it will be broken (just put together 4 of the dwarven heroes I've designed and it's clear such a party would be unstoppable), but I believe that also a party made of Nanok, Talhia, Kirga and Jaes (just to make an example) would be unbearable for any Overlord.

Also, I'm sure that adding too many custom characters to the "selection chart" would somehow unbalance the game. I've made a whole lot of statistics to calculate how the introduction of my custom characters would influence the final formation of a randomly selected party. So far, it seems changes are very minor, with a slight increase in Armor (0.3 points/4 heroes) and Conquest Value and almost 1 less HP per party. Due to an odd drawing of heroes, 3 characters out of the 8 chosen (4 pairs) were custom made, but only one was chosen for the campaign, hence I don't believe they're having such a bad influence on the gaming experience, so far.

Elric of Melniboné said:

You entirely missed the point (probably I wasn't at all clear). Use it to check your 'power level' against existing heroes. The 360 pts, as Antistone said already, is not a hard limit for brokenness, but simply the median value of the official-official heroes.

I would be wary of making heroes that are higher than about 390 (which puts them around the 80th percentile) (actually I'd aim at 380 or below myself - well, I'd aim at 360, for median value, but be prepared to go higher or lower by around 20), for two reasons.
First, you aren't going to make and use 'weak' heroes, I'd guess, so every 'strong hero you make and add to the pool boosts the overall likely average of the hero party.
Second, from the way you seem to do design your heroes they are actually likely to be slightly stronger than their value indicates - because you are cherry picking abilities to match the style of the hero and generate synergy. For example: the Defender skill, fixed at 40 pts, is worth considerably more on your 12W3Ar4Ct dwarf than it is on a 12W0Ar2Ct hero. Antistones programme does very well in valuing snergy in other areas, but i don't think it even tries in this one.
Saying 'my hero is no better than the best official hero' is more or less irrelevant. You are still basically just up-powering the hero party overall.

If you are 'offering' heroes for public consumption, it is also wise not to rely too heavily on just your own experiences in testing. Closed groups (as most descent groups naturally are) tend to have their own balances which twist strnegths and weaknesses. For example there is a forum member who insists (or did) that a group that is entirely 16W/2Ar/4CT is unbeatable, and can back it up with his own experience. What that mostly means is his OL isn't very good at dealing with that sort of group and taking advantage of it's weaknesses. That sort of party is quite strong, but it is not at all unbeatable and does have severe weakness that a good OL can take great advantage of.
OTOH, is your heroes are entirely for internal consumption then nobody else's experience matters all that much...

@Antistone
I don't remember where the clarification was, probably just an email from an FFG staff member.
However, it is just repeating what the document actually says (well, more or less), even if people miss that. If you lower a stat by two, you still only lowered one stat , so can't claim that as a '-2' in the costs. Of course, in the document as it stands you could lower a stat by -2 and count it as a -1 for costs, though I don't see many people being likely to do that!

Corbon said:

I didn't miss that, but as I said in my previous post, the document also uses an example where a hero raised 2 stats and lowered 4. So there has to be some mistake in that section.

"Subtract the number of traits you have lowered from the number of traits you have raised, then look up the result on the table below. (For example, if you raised 2 traits and lowered 4 traits , look up –2 on the table..."

"A trait cannot be both raised and lowered" (And there are only four.)

Writing "number of traits you have lowered" when they meant "number of times you have lowered a trait" is exactly the sort of mistake I expect from the Descent writers. Of course, it's far from the only error they could have made here. No matter what they intended, this entire section is unnecessarily confusing and could stand to be entirely rewritten.

So if there were some link I could cite to official clarification when this comes up, that would be mildly handy, because it's still not uncommon for someone to post heroes or hero editors based on those rules. But it's not terribly important, because the rules are pretty bad either way.

I thank both Corbon and Antistone for the pretty nice analysis of the matter of "game balance when using custom characters". I believe I'll make some heroes using Antistone's generator trying to stay in the 360 points boundary.

As 1 last note I'd like to point out how we tend to discard characters already used in campaign from successive drawings. That's because we like to play a somewhat different game each time, and having different heroes around really helps. Some of the characters I make are supposed to take slots previously occupied by characters used in previous campaigns. Since even with the random generation, players can still choose a bit their heroes, it's clear that the "power level" of disposable characters tends to (although slowly), unless I replenish the pool with at least decent characters. I don't think I'll make anymore anyway...Basically I believe I've explored almost all combos I wanted to see. More characters would mean nothing but variants of those already seen. Besides, considering the time a campaign requires (few months), I believe existing characters should be more than enough for the next years (and I suppose some characters will pop-out in the next years...hopefully some expansions). Both as a player and an overlord I'm not particularly concerned about having some more good tiers around. In our game experience (which is of course a limited one) an Overlord who plays well has the upper hand. As Corbon said, all characters have their own weak points and there's no perfect-absolute party. Randomization, besides, is still there to ensure some sort of "balance" to the game.

As for the editor...I believe you may lower a trait more than once and gain the benefits of doing so. Otherwise, it's pretty unusable. As for "minimals", I assumed a character's minimal stats to be the following (regardless of race).

HP8, Fatigue0, Armor0, Speed1.

HP8 and Armor0 are assumed as minimals since they cannot be lowered by races that sport them. I consider Speed1 to be the minimal because a character unable to move (or able to move only by Fatigue) would be utterly hard to use and even boring. Besides, I don't believe anyone would lower a character's Speed below 2, so it's pure speculation. Fatigue0...well a character can basically do anything even without having Fatigue. Fatigue simply allows characters to do "something more". I believe I actually lowered Fatigue to 0 in some of my earliest experiments, than decided that having at least one point might prove useful from time to time...

I know you're not really interested since you're not using that editor, but it was just to let you know, since that's the topic, by the way.

Ok, since I decided to try seriously Antistone's Character editor I started with trying to make anew my characters on this post.

Following, I will show you the BP cost of the characters I made with the official editor, when I re-did them with the Herogen v2.3 (for some of them I added notes because of editor's incompatibility).

Darghor The Tank 380

Dognar The Oracle 355 (actually having Level 2 Healer, while the original version only has Level 1, hence he should be something less...)

Ailey The Fairy 245 (again I had to give her Level 2 Healer, while this time she was Level 3, but I don't think she'd get over the 360 even with that)

Dargg The Slayer 267 (I had to give him Level 1 Soldier and 2 points of Fatigue while my version only has 1. Giving him -1 Fatigue but an additional +1Damage and +1Armor while adjacent to a friendly figure, I don't think he'd surpass 360, but Antistone may contradict me of course on this point)

Dark Jax 379

Dorg The Slayer 287 (I had to give him Level2 barbarian instead of Level3, which means he should have an extra +1Armor...worth 73 BPs?)

Eleana Lightspeed 337

Findair The Bard 381

Glun The Ogrun 335

Jold The Twalter 348

Hobi Uan Ke Goblin 283 (I gave him the Flexible Strike ability, assuming that turning a Yellow die into a Green die should be comparable, as far as damage output is concerned, to turn a Black die to a Silver die...anyway we are 77 points below 360, so I guess he should be ok anyway).

Kemlar The Inspiring 380

King Fabriongir 362

Shela The Jester 292 (Level 1 defender instead of Level 3 means she should cost more, as I made her...but there's a nice 68 points range...)

Xantya 359

As far as "aiming to 380 or below" it seems all my heroes are within the range. Only 4 of them actually go past the 360 limit and most are below. None of my characters looks more powerful than Lord Hawthorne's anyway, as far as Antistone's editor is concerned. That's encouraging isn't it? I'll play some more with it and let you know what it brings me too, as soon as I have time!

Elric of Melniboné said:

The Barbarian level shouldn't be an issue - just adjust the hero's base armor to compensate. Putting in the other levels of Barbarian couldn't accomplish anything except to let you build an identical hero with different cost.

With default settings, my editor complains if a hero's total armor is higher than 5 for any reason, though I can't argue that a hero with 6 base armor but who can't wear Armor items is fundamentally more broken than a hero with lower base armor that can. It also starts out speed at 3, so normally the only way to get a speed of 2 is if your ability lowers it (e.g. Brother Glyr's ability).

If you ignore the armor maximum and let speed stay at 3, my editor calculates a cost of 357 BP. (Yes, going from a kit of 8/3 to 8/4 is really expensive, because armor gives escalating returns.)

Elric of Melniboné said:

Changing a yellow to a green actually adds a lot more damage than a black to a silver (unless your surges are really efficient), but it reduces range by a lot (which black to silver doesn't), and you can't do it unless you have a yellow die to convert and a spare green die to add, which means you can't get that extra damage on all weapons (anything that already rolls 2 green, or that doesn't roll any yellow). It's really not comparable.

A better estimate would be just to continue the pattern for adding more trait dice out to 6, in which case the 6th die in your primary trait would cost 36 BP.

But I really haven't made any attempt to balance the editor for advanced campaigns, because I've never played them. A bunch of abilities would definitely become stronger or weaker, or need to be changed to work at all. Having extra starting skills would presumably be a lot less valuable, since it only increases your choices instead of actually giving you extra skills. Other stuff may change in value, too.

I admit I hadn't noticed 8HP 4Armor was a legal base kit. As far as I can see, Dorg is within the boundaries of your editor EVEN with an additional Speed point (and I believe that lowering a Speed point from 3 to 2 should be worh 20 BPs or so...).

As for Hobi Uan Ke Goblin, I knew turning a yellow to green isn't exactly like turning a black to silver...I simply had to put something there. By the way, even following your guideline, his cost goes up to 304, which is way below the 360 limit.

I also worked a bit more on some other characters to evaluate the correct BP.

I used the 8HP 4Armor build for Dargg The Slayer and added the Sorcery perk to the Soldier Level1. The final BP cost is 384 (in order to have final traits of 1 Melee, 0 Ranged and 2 Magic), but this character has (compared to the one I made by the official hero maker) +1 Fatigue, an Armor value of 4 regardless of being adjacent to other heroes and a +1damage (which can be allocated to range) regardless of being adjacent to a friendly figure. I think that -1 Fatigue, and the "adjacent to another hero" restriction to the +1Armor and +1damage bonuses, along with the inability to turn that extra damage into range, should be far worth the 24 points that get this character over the limit of 360.

Since Healer Level 2 is 15 points, Helaer Level 1 should be no more than 12 points. Hence Dognar The Oracle's adjusted cost should be around 352.

On the other hand I decided to overboost the price of Healer Level 3 to a mighty 25. Ailey the Fairy ends up costing mere 255 points.

As for Shela, let's say that Level3 Defender is a 100 points ability (but I really believe I'm strongly overpricing it, since I don't believe it to be twice and a half more effective than a Level1 Defender). Her BP cost goes up to 352, so she's still in the range of legality.

As far as numbers are concerned, it seems that only 4 heroes (5 if you consider King Fabriongir, who's worth 362) made by the official generator are stronger than the average 360 points hero made by the HeroGen 2.3 and even then, they all are in the 20BP range of difference, while 4 heroes (Ailey The Fairy, Glun The Ogrun, Eleana Lightspeed and Hobi Uan Ke Goblin) are even pretty underpriced, especially Ailey.

Hence I can't really see the problem...

Just an apology. I had a really long post covering every hero in detail and accidentally closed the browser before posting (or so it seems). Due to the vagaries of this forum s/w and sorting 'replies', I don't always use a word editor for long posts here. No energy (or time) now to redo the post but I'll try to get back to it later.

No need to apology Corbon...happens to me a lot often and I know it should bee deep night right now around your parts if you're from the US.

Singapore, GMT +8.

Had to do some actual work at work...

Yeah...also that happens to me...sometimes...

Elric of Melniboné said:

Regarding the Editor and it's error - when given a rule and an example that contradicts it, unless clear common sense (or further evidence) provides a guide otherwise, I'll stick with the rule. In this case, the rule is that you count the number of stats lowered, not the amount of stats lowered.

Regarding the Minimums, I have Fatigue at 2 and speed at 3. We don't actually have any official heroes lower than this (Glyr doesn;t count due to his special) and only 1 hero actually has as low as 2F. If you are going lower there, why not 4W?

I am also interested in your thematic explanation of why most of your dwarves have minimal fatigue when every official dwarf has virtually the maximum possible fatigue (6F official heroes are recent and still exceptionally rare). Dwarves have grit and stamina - that is what fatigue represents, the ability to push yourself harder. Yours have none, which makes them rather undwarf-like to me. It seems very much that you have simply sacrificed this aspect to boost their power in other areas, which I think is basically 'cheesing them up' if taken too far. This is completely subjective of course, but is a partial explanation of why I gave up on looking at this lot the first time without getting past the dwarves.

Elric of Melniboné said:

With Antistone's revised Defender costing though (still low IMO), he comes in at 400. SImilar to the dwarf in the other thread, I really dislike his lack of a compensating weakness in combat for his super-toughness. If you, for example, drop (edit: again, the forum deletes the word drop for some weird reason) his armour by 1 (he still has the -1 from defender most of the time) and up his fatigue by 1 (to a more dwarf-ly 4) and shift one dice away, he drops to 354 using the new Defender costing. That is a much more reasonable hero. He is much closer to a basic dwarf (split traits, higher fatigue, similar other stats) and a bit more reasonable overall. If you really want to keep the armour you could drop (edit!) both a skill and a dice entirely to come in at exactly 360 (still with the 4F).

Elric of Melniboné said:

So why thematically does a cleric get concentrated traits? Boost his fatigue (as above) to 4F and move 1 dice to magic and even with Healer 2 (4W) you come to 363.

Elric of Melniboné said:

Yes, she is simply underpowered, so much so that I can't see anyone playing her, ever. So why make the hero? It is almost as bad as a super-hero!
Boost her fatigue to 5 (the other fairy is very high fatigue) and move the combat skill to wizardry and she comes in at around 362ish for 2CT, assuming healing 5 pts is approximately 5/4 times as valuable as healing 4 pts.

Elric of Melniboné said:

Instead, I gave him Sorcery 1 (not much different from +1 damage), ignored the extra Armour and boosted fatigue back to a dwarvf-ly 4 and he came in at 360.

Elric of Melniboné said:

Move a melee to Range (what sort of assassin can't use a throwing knife or crossbow) and he comes in at 362

Elric of Melniboné said:

Drop armour by 1 (6 with Ironskin is pretty extreme), boost fatigue to a dwarf-ly 4 and speed to a normal dwarven 3, concentrate traits and skills on melee/combat (what self respecting slayer like this uses ranged weapons?) and he comes to 361.
Thats 8/4/5/3 3Me, 3Cbt, 4CT, Ironskin, no armour or runes.

Elric of Melniboné said:

Drop her fatigue by 1 and her CT to 2 and she comes in at 358. She is really badly over CT-ed as she is. Laurel can barely (well. not really) get away with it because her ability allows her to kill monsters, increasing her odds of survival. Elena's ability just increses the likelihood she will be out ahead on her own and get butchered even easier.

Elric of Melniboné said:

Drop his armour by 1 (why is a bard as well armoured as a tank) and he comes to 371 for 3CT. You could shuffle more (split dice etc) but he is slightly more reasonable then.

Elric of Melniboné said:

I boosted his speed (big guys can cover ground more quickly) and he came to 360 exactly... You could do fatigue instead for the same result.

Elric of Melniboné said:

348 at 3CT, which is overpriced badly CT-wise. This si a classic example of boosting a hero's CT value in order to boost his overall power which is ok for small rounding amounts, but almost always a bad mistake for larger amounts. 398 at 2CT which is his 'normal' range. Just dropping 1F brings him down to 369 for 2CT (as an aside, 4F with this skill is also a little more reasonable - I know from personal experience).

Elric of Melniboné said:

That's at 3CT, which is the wrong cost for him. At 2CT he comes in at 352 assuming Antistone's '6th dice' cost of 36 is about right.

Elric of Melniboné said:

Acceptable I guess. If you lower her fatigue by 1 and move the wizardry skill to Rogue she comes to 357.

Elric of Melniboné said:

In order to better fit the established dwarven model he needs higher fatigue. If you lower wounds by 4 and raise fatigue by 2 you can move the Rogue skill to Combat and come in at 361.

Elric of Melniboné said:

Using Antistone's revised costing (despite your objections I think that his revised costing for Defender is if anything still underpriced) I have her coming in at 362BP. That seems about right. She is rather pathetically weak overall, but her ability is very powerful for the whole party.

Elric of Melniboné said:

Seems entirely reasonable.

As further examples, here are my custom dwarves, and comments mid campaign (they are being used in two campaigns, one against me and one by my fellow hero player). Note that these were made from the FFG sheet before Antistone's spreadsheet was around.
Durin Dwarflord: 12/4/3/3 3Me, 1/1/1 Skills, CT 4, Deadeye 1 (385BP)
Even without Antistone's math, in hindsight I would change his Traits to a 2/1 split. He is a little too powerful as is, but I am stuck playing agsints him for the campaign duration. We learn from mistakes. If his trait dice are split 2/1 he becomes 368 - still powerful, but a bit more reasonable. He got Mighty in the campaign as his starting skill and is a beast in combat (never misses) as well as extremely tough - it is a little much to be honest.

Karak Runeseer: 12/4/2/3, 1Me2Ma, 1/1/1 Skills, Seer 1, 4CT (298! 348 at 3CT!) Wow, he is really underpowered. He drew MageCloak as his skill, which has meant even with just Leather armour he is always Armour 5-6 with Ghost armour as well. He was doing ok when he had the Staff of the Grave (with Mana Weave) but once that was CB-ed he went down to humdrum nothing again. The hero player doesn't like him because he never does anything except steal 2 threat. To slow, and too weak at combat. The OL doesn't like him because he is very difficult to kill and the threat thing is quite a nuisance.
If I was to redo him, I'd give him another fatigue (despite they way it works with the special), concentrate his dice and move the combat skill to wizardry, coming to 352.

Corbon said:

Not to put too fine a point on it, but you were the one that convinced me to give it an even lower cost initially. You rated it 3/5 ; the new cost I suggested puts it well above most of the abilities you rated a 5.

Corbon said:

That seemed odd. Looks like you used the numbers I gave in the other thread for Defender 2; with the numbers I gave for Defender 3 she'd be at 407 BP.

Antistone said:

We learn from our mistakes!
You'll note that most of the 'better' level 1 make-hero specials I rated as 3 as a default, simply to include them.
Now I've seen it in action more (into early silver level of a SoB campaign using it), I rate it much more highly. And I find your own arguments for the increased value convincing.
Part of the problem is that it is, like Ironskin, heavily dependent on the armour level of the user (and other party members, to a lesser extent), because it effectively raises armour by 1 point much of the time (the times it doesn't arguably roughly cancelled by the times it causes an actual miss). In this particular case it is on the most armoured hero around, making it extremely valuable. (Note that Shela's range of 6 from Defender 2/3 means it is almost always on all the other heroes as well, so her lack of armour is less important in it's value.)

Antistone said:

Yes, I thought it was Defender 2, didn't notice the extra range penalty. She's still so horribly weak personally that she might be 'ok' for me despite the numbers. Arguably no one will take her if she is their sole hero because she is so weak personally, despite having a great passive party boost, so she will be distinctly unfun to play (see Karak Runeseer). But one player controlling several heroes might take her because overall she is a bit overpowered with Defender 3. Just tone it down to Defender 2...

First thing: basically, characters are what they are because THEY ARE made with the official editor. They are priced right for THAT editor (which might not be good, I know, but still...) then I just checked how would they result if they were rebuilt as similiar as possible by Antistone's editor.

Dwarves were made with low fatigue, because I wanted them to sport high Armor and (often) high HP. Original version of Darghor was with 4 Fatigue and split skills, but then I decided to make him like this. If I'd remake him, I'd make him as in the original, and if I'd remake Dargg, I'd probably make him 2 Fatigue and 2 Speed just like Dorg (needed stats to achieve Level 3 skills, unless you want to lower Armor, than why should you use a dwarf chassis, anyway?). Darghor is a powerhouse, I know, since I used him. Fortunately, now he's benched as "already used" and won't see action for a LOOOONG while.

King fabriongir is inspired to an old Mordheim/Warhammer character, sporting extremely heavy runic armor, slow as a Dwarf can be and using axe and pistol (hence split traits).

Same goes with Dargg and Dorg (a Runelord from Warhammer and a Slayer from Mordheim). Slow but sturdy. Actually I had to give split trati to Dorg due to BP issues, but slayers sometimes use their axes as throwing weapons, so it's still ok.

Why does Dognar have non split dice? Simple. He's inspired to my War Cleric in my last TSR roleplaying game. This character was built as an absolute melee house and a very strong tank with very little magical abilities, mainly healing the party until he reached level 4 or so. Hence a strong melee tank with some wizardry skill and a minor healing ability. It may seem unflavorful, but I swear to you: Dognar was like this.

Dark Jax is inspired to a fictional character of my creation. Despite being an assassin, he's a fixed melee fighter using his stealth ability (enhanced by a bunch of magical items, if you want to know) to get on the target and slaughter him in melee. He's just like this. And just like this he was discarded during the current campaign pick, hence doesn't seem like he's a top tier anyway.

Findair has 2 Armor because the editor allowed it somehow (I know he is a top tier pick)...trying to flavor it, let's say he dodges a lot just like Dark Jax (after all high Dexterity adds to AC in TSR system, doesn't it?).

Besides Dark Jax and Findair both have Speed 5. Players won't put movement-reducing armors.

Eleana's just a Super Runner, made to be a Super Runner. I calculated that in RtL she might be able (with the right skills and a Vitality potion) to move more than 50 spaces in a turn she runs, enough to get her inside enemy lines, grab whatever she needs and return safely under her party's protection (of course that's quite an extreme build). She's made for that, otherwise I see no reason to build an elven character anyway.

I don't believe either Ailey or Shela to be overpowered. They need protection but are nice utilities for the party. Same goes with Jold. Anyway I didn't want to pack the heroes deck with top-tier picks.

Something along the same lines goes with Hobi, Xantya and Glun. They just add some options.

These days I've been building some characters with Antistone's editor (remaining within the 360 points)...I don't know if I'll ever add them to the bunch (there are already tons of characters to test right now, but some of them are pretty nice, although 5CT heroes tent to be actually a bit overpowered.

Just giving you some examples:

Ulog The Undying BP 351

HP24 Armor0 Fatigue4 Speed4 CT4

3 Melee

1 Fighting

Any healing you receive is doubled. Whenever you would suffer more than 4 wounds from a single attack, you suffer only 4 wounds instead.

Gimli Son of Gloin (yeah, the guy from The Lord of The Rings) BP 360

HP8 Armor3 Fatigue3 Speed3 CT4

2 Melee + 1 Ranged

2 Fighting

Your attacks have Daze. Your attacks have Bleed. You suffer 1 fewer wounds than usual each time you are wounded.

Link (for Nintendo fans) BP 358

HP16 Armor2 Fatigue3 Speed3 CT4

2 Melee + 1 Ranged

1 Fighting + 1 Subterfuge + 1 Wizardry

You can carry 5 extra items in your pack. You may equip one extra Other Item. Before making an attack you may change the equipment in your hand slots.

Marth (for GREATER Nintendo fans) BP 351

HP12 Armor1 Fatigue4 Speed4 CT4

3 Melee

1 Fighting

Your attacks ignore Stealth. Your attacks have Reach. Your attacks have Pierce 5.

Roy (as above) BP 351

HP12 Armor2 Fatigue4 Speed3 CT4

HP12 Armor2 Fatigue4 Speed3 CT4

3 Melee

1 Fighting

Your attacks have Bleed. Your attacks have Burn. When you discard an Aim order to make an Aimed Melee attack, the attack gains the Breath ability.

Ilyana (as above) BP 358

HP12 Armor2 Fatigue4 Speed3 CT4

2 Magic

1 Fighting + 1 Subterfuge + 1 Magic

Your attacks have Daze. -1 Damage and 1 free surge on attacks. You receive 2 free surges on all attack rolls.

Mia (as above) BP 358

HP12 Armor1 Fatigue4 Speed4 CT4

3 Melee

2 Melee + 1 Subterfuge

You have Stealth. When you spend fatigue to add dice to an attack roll, you add 2 power dice instead of 1.

Lord Ike (as above) BP 352

HP16 Armor2 Fatigue3 Speed3 CT5

3 Melee

1 Fighting + 1 Wizardry

Your attacks have Daze. Your attacks have Reach. You have Command 1.

Fardon The Wargear BP 353

HP8 Armor3 Fatigue3 Speed3 CT4

2 Melee + 1 Ranged

2 Fighting + 1 Subterfuge

You may equip one extra Other Item. You may equip two Armor items at once, but only one that prevents you from equipping Runes.

Garm The Untouchable BP 353

HP12 Armor2 Fatigue2 Speed3 CT5

3 Melee

1 Fighting + 1 Wizardry

You have Shadowcloak. You have Stealth. You have Ghost. Enemy figures can move through you, but cannot end their movement in the space you occupy.

That's all for now, folks! See ya!