Hi, everyone. Right now I'm having fun using Antistone's Herogen v2.3.

I created this tread to post heroes I come up with. There's one for now, but there will still be more to come.

I love tanks...so it's pretty strange I started with a Mage, don't you think? Well, Ilyana is still a pretty tankish mage, starring an amazing Armor of 2 and a Conquest of 4. Slow but with average fatigue, she's very specialized, although she sacrifices 1 skill, but I had to save points for her ability. Being a Lightning Mage, Ilyana needed a fitting skill. Now, I could give her the Bolt stuff (gain Bolt on aimed attacks - Stormcaller) or I could give her extra surges (after all, they look like lightnings, don't they?). I opted for the second, so I gave her Landrec's ability. Having more points to spend, I added in the Flair perk, adding an extra surge at the cost of -1 damage (it's bad in the beginning but with the progressing of the campaign the extra surge shall become better than the extra damage). I still had few BP to spend and 1 perk slot empty, so I added Daze to her attacks, which is a nice effect associated with Lightnings (you know...when you get an electric shock...you are Dazed...actually). An alternative version might have Stormcaller instead of Landrec and Flair. Let's say this version is better for boss fighting, the Stormcaller version is better for mass charnage (Bolt works really nice with Daze, by the way).

And as expected, here's the real tank. This guy is already known to many. These are a couple of versions I made using Antistone's editor...as for his statline...well, just think of him as a cross between a Dwarf and a Human (much like a Mule from Dark Sun).

This first version is the "Pure Fighter" one (BP357).

This one is a bit more "Paladin flavored" (BP 358).

To obtain them I just used the typical Tank chassis (Tahlia, Trenloe...), and added the Streyana ability. At that point the character is OK if fitted with 3 melee trait dice and 3 Fighting skills, but I preferred to reduce the skills to add some more perks. I think that nice versions with 4 Fatigue can also be obtained using this "skeleton".

PS - Just to let you know, Ilyana is 357 BP.

And a couple more.

Oami the Vengeance was rebuilt using the Herogen into the absolute Ghost buster and a nice 5CT tank named Lord Ike makes his appearance

I like the way she's now. Clearly fulfills her role and negates enough stuff to be sure she will be helpful in any situation. 353 BP.

A very strong tank...that's why he's 5CT, by the way...besides his skills good (1 fighting + 1 wizardry really reduces chances of getting good stuff). The Black Curse Immunity is very helpful, i believe, with this character. 354 BP.

And yet another version of Yuron, this time getting back to the original concept of the 5 CT hero. There are tons of versions of this guy in my log, but this is the final I came up with as the best built for 5 CT.

Keeping the statline and Streyana's ability, I worked a bit on what the big guy could get upgrading from 4CT to 5CT. I decided to give him the extra fatigue this guy deserved to better fit the image...considering the innatural muscular structure two additional power dice would also be very appropriate. With few points remaining I gave him the already tested Ghostslayer ability. After all you nobody wants his mighty champion to tremble in fear or look in despair at spectres. BP 360

PS - Just out of curiosity, rising by 1 point his Fatigue and adding a Fighting Skill would make him 438 (on par with Astarra), while giving him an extra fighting skill and adding the Ignore Stealth perk would get him to 429 (on par with Kirga and Tahlia).

Well, you know what I think about 5CT heroes already, so that covers Lord Ike and the last version of Yuron. You can see yourself the difference though, that keeping the target to around 360BP makes. The heroes are a bit more interesting and a bit more 'normal' than just super-powered killer-combos. They have strengths, yes, but weakness as well. Both of these heroes would be acceptable aside from the 5CT (I mean, they are a bit overpowered at 4CT, but they don't have super-combos. Ike, for example, could have gotten Blessing as his 3rd skill, so just becomes a Hawthorne variation (different stat combo, but another 'standard mix' and a spreading of skills) who is guaranteed to draw Blessing as one of his skills. Strangely, I'd probably accept him as is with a 4CT cost (404BP)! Similarly, I'd probably accept the last version of Yuron at 4CT as well (in fact, it appears to me you made a mistake and that is in fact a 4CT 360BP version!)
I don't particularly like these heroes, or find them interesting, but that is personal taste. I don't find anything to disagree with in their make up though...

Ilyana is another fairly humdum hero for me. She has simply traded in a third skill for Prodigy (which is somewhat better than drawing a random skill, but the rest of her 'special' is fairly weak I think). I don't think the stats 'work' very well for her, but don't have any technical issue with them. She is probably too easy to kill for a 4CT hero, because she will rarely want to wear heavier armours due to their propensity to rule out runes (ie, more than half the magic weapons), which means that I think she is a 'weaker' hero than her BP indicates. I also have some personal bias against the pricing of Flair. While mages generally can do more interesting things with surges than other heroes, they also have a propensity to be unable to actually deal much raw damage (initially better but later worse than ranged heroes!). Dropping damage for surges is generally only really useful if you are doing enough damage in the first place! For example if using a Silver Weapon a Ranged Hero will have 3 options with "~=damage or better and including at least 1 green dice" (and a weapon with no surge expenditure but 2 green dice, Pierce 3 and a reroll on one dice), while a mage will have just two options with "at least one green dice and 1=damage "+ ice storm which has 2 green dice and no surge expenditure (and no pierce or reroll but great blast). Basically, mages can overdo the surge thing and find themselves unable to actually do much damage if they are not careful. A Blast 5 attack that does not quite enough damage to kill any of the 10 monsters it catches is generally less useful IMO than a single shot than kills something.
Acceptable, just not a hero I would ever pick personally.

Oami is probably the most interesting hero you made here (even though I prefer simpler specials than a huge list of immunities/ignores). I think he is likely to be a bit weak in combat though. Sure, he can hit anything, but can he kill it? He is always going to be short 1 trait dice (even though he can use two weapon types and with one less skill has less opportunity to get a combat bonus skill too.

The big difference really is that pretty much all of the heroes are 'acceptable' now rather than overpowered monsters. Indeed, some are a little underpowered if anything, due to hidden subtleties that even Antistones' generator doesn't take itno account (thoug I'm not sure if mathematically they could (reasonably) be taken into account in some cases).
I prefer a bit more simplicity in my designs, but that is nothing more or less than personal preference. Clearly, you prefer to throw as many variations as possible into a mix, which is fine, for you.

I can swear to you that the latest version of Yuron is 360 points at 5CT and 410 at 4CT. Actually he's just a bit better than Karnon if you look at him (+2Armor, -1 Speed, armor restriction, not immune to frost and ice tiles but immune to Ghost). He "could" be 4CT if you think at him that way, but he'd definitely be a top-tier, probably, while at 5CT he's fairly balanced (did I already say I love Antistone's editor?!).

As for Ike, yeah, he trades Hawthorne's third ability for a "Blessing" somehow and trades 1 fatigue and 1 movement for 1 armor. The "immunity to black curse" thing is just to "fill the points" at 5 CT, so consider that I wouldn't even give it to him at 4CT, but for the "idea" of the character he needs Command and Reach and that kind of statline. I believe he's almost on par with Hawthorne in Vanilla, but has better potential in AC. Again, he could be a 4CT "top tier" character (at 397 points, since I'd remove the Immunity to Black Curse), instead of an average 5CT average character, but here I posted only those heroes which were "legal" for the editor.

Oami is a female dwarf, just to let you know and well her design is the same of the one I had made on my own...she just negates different stuff here. She's thought to be a utility character, not a powerhouse and I like the way she should work like this...

Ilyana is a strange character and should as well be considered a utility. Even while wearing light armors, she's not that defenseless: base armor 2 is pretty good and she's not supposed to be a frontliner. On top of that, at gold level, armors that don't allow to use runes are only -1 Armor if compared to the Dragonscale Armor AND she can even become a tank with Magecloak, if you're playing with those skills. If you are not, she could stick to staves which are fair enough, especially with so many additional surges. Having Daze and 3 extra surges on all attacks should really make up for the -1 damage and even for the starting 2 trait dice. As I said elsewhere, I have made a slightly modified version of Antistone's editor (really, the only BIG bug there is that I wanted Barbarian Level3 among the abilities and introduced it, but for some reason it seems that it always proves more convenient than Barbarian Level2 BP-wise, meaning it has to be fixed somehow). In my version of the editor, some of the abilities are turned into perks and both Stormcaller and Landrec's ability are perks in my editor now (of course they retain the full cost, meaning combos should still be kept under control, as long as you aim to 360BP characters). Anyway, with this verion I made a variant of Ilyana which is very "extreme", but very "thunderish". I don't have the time to prepare the sheet so I'll just post the result.

HP12 Fatigue2 Armor2 Speed3 CT4 (yeah, she's slow...but if you know Ilyana, you know you should expect her to be slow)

1 Melee + 1 Magic (yeah, she starts as a "not so good" mage, but she's got the potential to grow)

2 Wizardry Skills (help getting something good as a starter).

Mass Perk Ability: -1damage but Daze and 3 free surges on all attacks. Bolt on Aimed Magic attacks.

360BP

This version is quite meh for Vanilla, but in Advanced Campaign where she has plenty of time for buying the extra trait dice she lacks, I believe this character can become one of the most powerful mages in the game. She's a hard character in the beginning but can give satisfaction, on my opinion. I like this design.

Elric of Melniboné said:

I found my 'error'. Redid the hero again (didn't save it after yesterday's reply). Set the stats at 16/4/2/3 (triple checked!) and all the dice/skills correctly (triple checked) then after adding the abilities/perks it came to exactly 360 at 4CT. Until I looked up and found the wounds down to 12 somehow.
Anyway...
I think Karnon is crap, from both analysis and experience (I played him in a silver-start RtL campaign after a bad draw for heroes). The editor doesn't take into account that 5 dice is strictly worse than 4 dice. That is why a slightly improved Karnon is no issue for me, and probably why I don't mind the final Yuron despite 410 cost at 4CT. I think the true cost is actually less than 377 (same hero with only 4 dice)

Elric of Melniboné said:

Again, we are playing very different games.
The early campaign is actually the most important time for a hero's traits. The difference between 2 trait dice and 3 trait dice at early copper can often be the difference between killing a monster and not, yet the difference between AgAgAg and AgAgb latter on is almost negligible. Power differences mean a lot less later, especially as a fatigue point or two (of which more are available and less needed) can make up any minor differences on the rare occasions they do matter later in the campaign.
Thus it isn't how powerful a hero can be 'later' that is important, it is how powerful the hero can be 'early' that matters.

Your Ilyana with 1 magic dice and -1 damage (but +3 surges) is a hero I would consider nigh-unplayable in a campaign.
Give her any shop or copper magic weapon: and she will struggle to kill far too many monsters. If you can't kill a copper tier 1 monster on more or less any non-miss shot with most shop weapons and a copper tier 2 monster with most copper weapons you get an enormous black line ruled through you in my book.
For example: Bane (copper blast) - she needs 5 damage to kill a beastman (only tier 1!) on WGb-1 - doable, but not reliably.
Cone of Fire - will kill beastmen reliably, but to get a sorcerer or most other tier 2 monsters she needs around 7 damage from WYb+2 - basically she'll only get that if the W die rolls well, 1/3 chance.

Basically, you must be able to reliably do 5 damage with shop weapons (no more than 1 pierce) and 7 damage (including no more than 2 pierce) with copper weapons, or I won't consider you for any roll other than 'runner'. It simply costs the party too much early on, regardless of what your 'potential' is later.

Corbon said:

I have to disagree - if you almost kill 10 monsters with 1 attack, that suggests that you can finish them off with a second attack. Killing 10 monsters in 2 attacks is quite a bit better than killing 2 monsters with 2 attacks - even if you can't kill any with a single attack, in my estimation. Especially considering you can often make both of those attacks in a single turn.

Of course, I realize this example was exaggerated.

And getting a bunch of free surges and the ability to make Bolt attacks with any magic weapon seems kind of redundant. If you're sinking darn near half of your BP into just your ability, you'd better have an absolutely killer strategy.

Corbon said:

5 dice may be overall worse than 4 dice in advanced campaigns , but it's certainly not strictly worse, and in vanilla it's strictly better.

As I've noted before, there's probably a lot of things that should be priced differently for advanced campaigns. 5 dice should be cheaper, secondary trait dice should probably be cheaper (since I imagine they don't matter later in the campaign), starting skills should be cheaper (since they're just choices and not actual skills), several abilities may need to be totally reworked. But I don't have the advanced campaign experience to price them correctly. You're welcome to take a crack at it if you want.

Antistone said:

1. Fair enough, if you can get that second attack in. Mind you, for her it is just as likely to be a third, and fourth attack, not just a second!
And of course, yes, this was exaggerated.

2. Bolt? What Bolt? That would make a huge difference as she could pick the highest damage dealing weapons to do AoE attacks...
EDIT: Ahh, I spotted it. Well, that improves things a lot, as she can take a weapon like Immolation (shop) and be at WGb+0.5 (and probably another .5 from rolled surges at least) with AoE - MUCH better.

3. Fair cop guv. Only in Advanced Campaigns. That was, OTOH the context given for Ilyana, so I assumed it carried through...
Maybe that was a bad use of 'strictly', but the cost of not being able to add an extra dice (or more, of any level) averages much higher than the saving of 1F on the few attacks that wouldn't kill with one less black dice (especially melee attacks).

Antistone said:

PS Not likely! At least not for some time. What you have done is an enormous job and I don't feel up to systematically revising it to the sort of quality you normally bring. I can do a rough estimate as and when things crop up, but that is about my limit.
For example, even the " you must be able to reliably do 5 damage with shop weapons (no more than 1 pierce) and 7 damage (including no more than 2 pierce) with copper weapons, or I won't consider you for any roll other than 'runner' " thing was something I didn't understand myself until that pattern became clear when I looked at what I expected of a hero, in the light of instinctively dismissing Ilyana due to low damage dealing.

First thing I have to say is that the Ilyana Lnadraek+Stormcaller+Flair+Daze build is all about flavor. She's not supposed to be a powerhouse or something. As for her efficience, her average damage with a Sacrifice Rune (without taking into account any skill, of course) is around 5.9 damages. With the Copper Other Item Rune and Cursed Staff, her average damage output rises to 11.8 damages (and she can wear any armor while equipped like this). Hence I still believe she has some potential for the AC, especially if she's lucky enough to get a nice starting skill.

Still, that character is more about flavor than anything else. The first version is surely more competitive.

As for Yuron I made three versions expressely for "simple design lovers" such as Corbon.

THE FIRST:

HP16 Fatigue3 Amor3 Speed3 CT4 BP356

3 Melee dice

3 Fighting skills

Cannot equip Armors that prevent from equipping Runes.

(very very smooth design, isn't it? He can be brought to 361 by adding a minor perk like Immunity to Bleed or additional Other Item)

THE SECOND:

HP16 Fatigue5 Armor3 Speed3 CT4 BP361

3 Melee dice

2 Fighting skills

Cannot equip Armors that prevent from equipping Runes.

(not entirely legal, but 1BP shouldn't make him so "illegal" either)

THE THIRD:

HP16 Fatigue3 Armor3 Speed3 CT4 BP360

5 Melee dice

1 Fighting skills + 1Wizardry Skill

Cannot equip Armors that prevent from equipping Runes.

(huge damage dealer, but chances of getting useful skills decrease dramatically)

By the way, this:

Elric of Melniboné said:

...is NOT functionally the same as the Stormcaller ability on my default ability list. My version specifically requires you to discard an Aim order, so it doesn't work with "all your attacks are aimed" effects like the Born to the Bow skill or the Bracers of Accuracy. Because I thought a hero with a lucky skill draw suddenly getting Bolt on ALL his attacks would be just a tad broken.

I realize you want it to fit on one line so that you can use it as a hundred-BP perk instead of a primary ability, but I'd urge caution...

I knew it wouldn't be exactly the same when I "modified" the editor for my purposes, but I don't intend to use the ability on any other character, and since Ilyana is substantially a caster, she won't use Born to the bow, nor Bracers of accuracy. I could go as far as not allowing the three "aimed" abilities (Breath, Bolt, Blast) to ranged guys in my editor and allow them abilities with the original text....or, if the original text is but 2 lines, I could simply recopy the original text (making them abilities and not perks), than allow them to have 3 perks.

I hope you agree though that Command 1, Unstoppable and Pierce5 are fully "perkable".

Text length is the primary criteria for making something a perk, not the only criteria. I don't think that particularly character-defining effects should be available as "extras", and some combinations of effects would be abusive. You yourself complained about the combination of Shadowcloak and Ghost, which are barely synergistic at all.

Consider the combination of Focus and Stormcaller. Or Vigor and Boots of Speed. Or Life Sheath and Mystic Shield. Even just stacking multiple abilities with similar benefits can sometimes threaten to break the game through sheer efficiency. I considered adding some sort of option to choose two abilities that fit into the box together rather than one ability plus perks, but there's way too many potentially-broken combinations.

Tactician, Unstoppable, and Needling don't have obviously broken combos that leap out at me (though I wouldn't be at all surprised if someone found one for Unstoppable), but they're powerful game-altering effects, and their prices are pretty tenuous, to boot. I left them as abilities deliberately because they're good enough to build a character around, weird enough to nullify some overlord strategies, and I'm not particularly confident that they're balanced, even alone.

Of course, you can design heroes however you want, and you don't need my permission. In fact, I advertise the customizability of my editor because I want people to be free to do exactly that. There's nothing that says I'm necessarily right about everything. But no, I didn't leave them as abilities instead of perks simply out of arbitrariness or forgetfulness.

That was a very fine response and following your lines I'll keep using my modified version to create heroes (you can always tell and advise me when you believe one of my creations with it is far too unbalanced).

I believe the possibility to custom your editor is one of its great virtues and one of the (many) reasons it's so much fun!

After a while, time for a couple more creations with Antistone's editor.

First one is one of my (but surely not just mine) favourite characters ever.

The tank build is taken more than everything from his characteristics in Smash Bros. 2 Melee and 1 Ranged, 'cause he can use multiple weapons, although sword and shield are his specialization. As for skills, I believe he should be able to do something of everything. He looks much like that in the Zelda series, by the way. Link always brings along a lot of stuff and is overequipped with a lot of useful tools, hence Pack Mule and Westram's abilities. Since I believe such character should swap more weapon types during the game, the last ability was added in to make him work. Substantially I'd love characters to multiclass this guy, instead of specializing on just one fighting style. As for BP, he's 358.

Second one is a variation on an existing Descent character that I (but it's not just me) believe to be very underpowered...

Since Red Scorpion is born with split dice and skills I believe the best build for her would be a Runner. Bringing her to 360 BPs meant adding a point of Fatigue and a point of Speed. She still had lots of points to spend, so I gave her the ability to move through Rubble and Obstacles that really makes her stand apart as a runner at this point!

Do you like them? Probably Lyssa's coming soon, but I'm finding it really difficult to fix her at the moment...

Elric of Melniboné said:

Interesting idea to fix Red Scorpion. The addition to her ability still seems a little lackluster, though. It's utility is highly dependent on the presence of rubble or water. I guess rubble isn't that uncommon, water is a bit iffier though. I'd be tempted to give her a full-fledged Acrobat, but I'm not sure how that works out in the points.

How can she possibly be a 'runner' with that sort of bust?

Otherwise, yeah, good job.

A character with 5 Fatigue and 5 Speed already has enough movement to "run around" of her own. Add in access to all Skills and ability to ignore a couple of obstacles blocking movement...why shouldn't she be a good runner? What else should she be used for?

By the way, I know it comes a bit late, but...

Red Scorpion is copiright of Fantasy Flight Games.

Ilyana, Ike and Link are copiright of Nintendo.

Yuron's art is a creation of Howietzer on Deviantart.

I'm really sorry, but I can't find the name of Oami's artist.

Elric of Melniboné said:

Bust (noun 2.)

Because it is defiance of the laws of physics that she be a runner. She already can't actually stand upright...

Elric of Melniboné said:

Fourth rate television of course! Something to do with beaches and drowning people ought to sell, given the right circumstances.

Alternatively she should have some sort of stun effect, or possibly daze. Doubled on geeky Sorcerors and repressed Dark Priests of course.

lol, and I was thinking you were serious!

Corbon said:

Two words: magic bra. =P

They have spells to throw fireballs and heal wounds, you're telling me there's never been a female mage who researched ideas for adding a little extra support? =P

Of course, if it was developed by a male wizard it'd probably be called "Bigby's Grasping Hands..."

Corbon said:

Fourth rate television of course! Something to do with beaches and drowning people ought to sell, given the right circumstances.

Alternatively she should have some sort of stun effect, or possibly daze. Doubled on geeky Sorcerors and repressed Dark Priests of course.

Well played, sir. Coming the fall to MTV (Menarra Television), Red Scorpion stars in Cleavage a story of a young woman out for revenge, cutting a swath through the hordes of beastmen who murdered her family! But who is this evil mastermind? Could the Overlord possibly be... HER FATHER?! Dun dun DUN!

"Sea of Blood? More like Sea of Boobs!" - Ebert & Roper

I actually misread the word "bust" in Corbon's reply, reading "boost"...that's what the misunderstanding comes from...by the way, it's exactly BECAUSE of that bust that she should be a runner as much as she can, don't you agree?

Putting busts aside, these last times I've been making a few chracters using Antistone's editor. Here are my last creations.

These firs two are variants of Ispher which bring him to about 360 BPs. The "Burn" version (he's a Dragon hybrind, so burn should be ok) is 362 BPs and the "specialized shooter" version is 359 BPs. In both cases I thought that adding some Armor would be very fine for this character.

Next is the BIG Dragon Hybrid. A 5CT design allows to make this Tank-like Drakonian

All abilities are based on the Red Dragon design. He's 358 BPs. For those who don't feel like using a 5CT character, here's the 4CT design...

1 less Fatigue and only the Breath on Aimed remaining...for 362 BPs.

More are coming as soon as I have time to post them...