According to the faq:

Q: Are hero abilities and skills applied to attacks made
with cannons?
A: Yes.

And Tobin skill is:

When Tobin makes a successful attack, add the distance to his target to his damage.

So, if I understand it, if he attacks with a cannon that has +9 range, he should add +9 to damage if the target is separated nine spaces. WOW!!!!???

gran_orco said:

Don't use Tobin in SoB.

He wasn't designed by FFG (designed by enthusiastic but less than competent foreign editions as a local bonus and eventually released by FFG due to 'collector' demand) and has the potential to totally destroy SoB with ridiculous one-shot kills at super-long ranges.

Corbon said:

If you use Tobin, you might increase your chance of defeating SoB

duhtch said:

By ridiculous one-shots from across the board before the opposing Boss/Lt/Ship even gets a turn?

That's worse than having no chance of actually winning the overall game but at least having the internal game parts reasonably balanced.

Has anyone ever ACTUALLY tested Tobin in SoB and brought the campaign to its end or is it all just numerical speculation?

Elric of Melniboné said:

Mostly its numerical 'speculation' - which doesn't invalidate it. Some things really don't need testing, you can see the potential without having to run it. I didn't need to play with Landrec to figure out he was a more dangerous mage that Sahla...

Schmiegal at least had a boss one-shotted near the start of a campaign in this thread, showing just the start of what was possible.

Ryric at BGG was running a campaign including Tobin (and Kel). It didn't all that signifcant there, even though Tobin was reported as one-shotting practically everything (remember that ranged heroes usually struggly early on with weaker weapons) and sinking enemy ships in two rounds, but his heroes were clearly not particularly competent players.

My friend played with him, and he is a competent player . He is clearly a mighty heroe in SOB, but from my point of view, he is not determinant (the OL won the game, although Tobin died rarely). It is true that he did a lot of shots to great distance and high damage, but the lieutenant was covered by his minions and there was other fights in the battle, so if the OL is competent he can fight with the heroes with a few more problems (more problems with Tobin, but not incurable problems).

the big problem with Tobin is that, even though you can argue if he is to strong or not to strong( if you ask me there should be no doubt about banning him from Sob and Rtl, maybe even vanilla) ... but he is unfairly better than all the other archers by far... and it is not a valid argument to say: lets keep Tobin, Sob is imba anyhow because the Ol wins all the time ... it just does not help balancing the game in any aspect if he 1 shots everything...

Hi, I'm gran_orco's competent player (friend) :-P (and new here, so, hello all).

About Tobin, as per my point of view, it's a dangerous character, but all characters are dangerous if OL isn't clever... Yes, there are characters farly more dangerous than others. But I'm agree to play with him in my campaing (actually I'm OL) but not to aply his special hability to cannons. O_O' glups...

I've played with Tobin (as character) in our last campaing (with other person as OL) and well played is a very good character, it's a very good archer, and you only need a semi-good bow (basically, one that gives you extra-distance (yellow and blue dices, with pierce 2 (copper one's?) to do GREAT damage to all monsters. One shot, one kill (or near death). But I think it's not determinant. In SoB, there are many sea encounters, where Tobin has good chance to destroy every enemy OL throws to the group, but in Islands or dungeons, it's more difficult for him to do that. Specially in Islands (I hate them when I play how Tobin).

If OL is enough smart...he can do suffer Tobin...and all the others characters....I assure you... ;-)

Ap0 said:

The problem is not wether Tobin is powerful or not (which is obvious, by the way, since he's the best ranged attacker of the game. The problem is wether he entirely destroys the game or not. As a Overlord it's normal to expect a better character among the others. The problem is wether the game becomes impossible for the overlord or not. I believe having to deal during copper campaign with a character with 8 Armor (Nanok+3 dice+Enduring), Taunt, high mobility (4 speed+4 fatigue) and damage potential (melee hero with 3 5 dice), which is very doable, might be a pain for any OL, especially if the party did the Hunting the Wyrm Rumor and he's got Ironskin (invulnerable to most copper monsters and some silver...). Simply put the overlord must find the ways to limit the powers of superheroes. Tobin has 3 movement and 3 fatigue, which means he remains without fatigue very soon. Play a pit on him when he makes his last movement and his damage potential is annihilated for 1 turn, or block his LoS with a boulder (always played when he cannot spend movement to get out of its way. Besides, in dungeons his damage potential is limited and I'd go as far as say that inside dungeons Laurel has better damage potential.

Elric of Melniboné said:

Tobin utterly changes the parameters in encounters, which is where the game is won and lost.

Just because some people played with him and he didn't 'dominate' their game (according to them), does not mean he doesn't have that potential. Note that all players have admitted that he dominated the monsters. How much he dominated may or may not have changed their game, but I suspect it changed their game more than they personally noticed - not having much other data to compare against.

Note that Nanok has been officially gutted in SoB. Precisely because although he can be 'handled' by a smart OL most of the time, he retained (in RtL) the capability to totally change the game dynamics due to his unique personal attributes. A hero with 8-10 armour (and maybe Ironskin, definitely Ghost armour) can go toe to toe with just about any Lt (not the soaring ones) and expect to win on his own , which totally disrupts the foundation of the Lt mechanics.

Similarly, Tobin on his own , can totally go up against many of the LTs with a fair chance of winning (if played well in the right situation), which totally disrupts the foundation of the Lt mechanics.
Normal heroes simply can't do this, at least not with the high degree of frequency and probability.

As an example, in my solo campaign Laurel, who is considerably weaker than Tobin at longer range is, is dominating.
The most recent fight, vs the giant encounter leader Orion (with silver level leader bonus of +48 wounds) was destroyed by Laurel (with minor help) in two rounds of combat, without ever getting close enough to make an attack.
Laurel was a pure copper hero (the campaign has just switched to silver and the heroes have not yet even seen a silver item. They have the silver SM upgrade but not the copper SM upgrade (they missed the SM timing narrowly) so you can count that as the copper upgrade - never mind that hers is +4W and the giant never got in an attack, so that upgrade played no part.
The giant Orion was destroyed by two rounds of shooting by Laurel as gap between giant and ship narrowed. There was actually 1 attack by Carthos to finish the giant off for the last 4-5 wounds, but the giant never close enough to attack.
Tobin would have finished the giant off at least a round earlier, attacking from the first turn at super-long ranges rather than the 2nd/3rd turn. He would have done more damage per attack too, and probably not needed the extra finishing off and maybe with an attack in hand.

Lts and Leaders generally aren't supposed to lose to just one hero, without a serious challenge!

It doesn't matter that the OL will probably still win my game (although the heroes look to have the best chance I've seen anyone have after a freak Siren kill - 6/7 web failures and massive damage from Laurel again!), Laurel (and even more so Tobin would be) is changing the nature of the game because her capabilities are so far outside what a normal hero can do.
Tobin changes things even more because he has the capacity to change things totally on turn one, before the OL can respond.
Just becuase the heroes don;t end up doing this, for whatever reason, doesn't change that capability.