Hey all, figured I'd get back into making characters. This time, however, I'm gonna use Antistone's lovely hero generation sheet to make my heroes. Hopefully they'll come out a bit more balanced. If anyone has any requests for heroes, I'll do my best, but for now I'm gonna focus on making fairly balanced heroes, and learning more about the system from you wonderful people. I'll be posting mine and my friends heroes here for review, and to share with the community.

Note, none of the characters will have artwork for now. I'm trying to focus more on the character themselves, rather than hunting down proper art. I will describe a good figure for each character, however.

We'll be waiting for your creatinos. By the way, I strongly reccommend "hunting for nice pictures" since they may be really inspiring (at least to me) in the character creation process.

Heheh, alright :3

Also, now that my friends are interested in playing (Since I've given up DMing), I'm getting to test characters. After a few more dungeons I'll probably post the four characters we've made for Road to Legend. One of them seems incredibly overbalanced at a glance, but now that I'm playing her, she's actually quite tame XD

Also, what's the rules on characters with more than 3 skills, or with more than 3 trait dice? Is there anything against having a character with 2 of each skill?

Edit: Gonna post a few tonight just for reviews, mostly of really interesting character concepts.

Edit 2: Meh, gonna go ahead and post a handful of them, probably the most recent ones. Got nothing else to do XD

Well bugger, I had everything all typed out and pretty, and I seem to have managed to mess it all up. I went to sleep last night, forgot to post, and my computer crashed with all of it typed up... All the characters I've made are within 5 points of the final BP cost of 360.

Blackest: Tough and hard to kill, Blackest is a nightmare for almost any Overlord because of her ability to take damage, and to deal it right back. The easiest way for the Overlord to deal with her is traps, and to simply ignore her with monsters. Originally, Blackest had 20 Wounds and 0 Armor, but after a bit of revisions, I decided to give her 16 Wounds and 1 Armor. She's hard to keep down, hard to put down, but any overlord that manages to kill her is going to enjoy a hefty reward for their troubles. Her unusual skill and trait combination makes her difficult to play, however, and tends to make her strong and mobile, things that aren't terribly great for a magic strong hero. Blackest was the original character I was going to play in the current Road to Legend campaign that's being run. A razorwing painted in dark colors, or a small dragon-like figure would work best for Blackest, given her relation to dragonkind.

Zara: A tough and fairly powerful, if somewhat bland, character, Zara is fairly fast-moving, and is difficult for even a good overlord to get a good shot at, thanks to her regenerative capabilities and shadowcloak ability, though she's just a tiny bit squishy for her 4 conquest. Zara is ideally meant to use either a melee weapon or magic weapon, depending entirely on her set of skills. Zara's currently being used in my Road to Legend campaign, and thus far she seems very balanced. Any armored elf figure should work well for Zara.

Aln'da'ri: Though overpowered at a glance, Aln'da'ri is, rather than powerful, a master of all trades. He's a powerful character, capable of heavy swings and great versatility, but his broad assortment of abilities leaves him a bit lacking in some departments. He is fairly slow-moving, and is a bit squishy for his 4 conquest value, and while he has a great amount of skills, this generally causes him to be very versatile rather than powerful in any particular situation. Aln'da'ri is being used in our current Road to Legend campaign, where he's currently standing in as a melee character, though he's quite capable of filling in any other position.

Hataya: Though rather squishy, this elf is hard to get a good hit in on when in the hands of a well-skilled player. Hataya is a very quick, mobile character, which relies heavily on ranged weapons to get her damage done. Her extensive list of skills ensures that she'll end up useful, despite her low Fatigue, and her unique way of regaining fatigue ensures that she'll never be without fatigue for terribly long. Her attacks punch through armor a bit, thanks to bleed, and she's the bane of undying creatures everywhere. Because of her abilities, she's a hard character for an overlord to kill, if she's given enough room.

Talnir: A character I originally created more as a concept than anything, Talnir is a very mobile, fast character reliant on ranged weapons. Unlike most ranged characters, however, Talnir can dish out a great deal of damage thanks to his ability to drink a potion and replace it's effects with an attack, allowing him to possible crunch out six attacks in a single round at most. Coupled with bleeding attacks this makes him incredibly dangerous to even an Avatar, all with a paltry 3 Conquest value. Talnir could likely use a bit of re-ruling, as could his ability. I made Talnir mostly to prove that even a character below the bar (357 Final BP) is very, very deadly if built correctly.

If I might suggest to Antistone, I think I have a revision of the ability that Talnir uses... "Once per turn, when you drink a potion, you may choose to immediately make one attack instead of the usual effect."

Tadask Nezerull said:

You can only drink one potion per turn. That's an official and very important rule.

2 fatigue and 4 speed does not qualify one as "a very quick, mobile character", no matter how many subterfuge skills one has. The baseline for comparison is 4/4, anything less than that is notably slow .

Derp derp. I'm still learning, and therefore occasionally make a mistake like that.

Also, as to Hataya, if she ends up with the right skills she's a very mobile character overall. As is she is a bit slow, but has a tendency to place Run orders fairly often eitherway.

Blackest: odd design...strange design...I like it. Perhaps 20HP 0Armor was better with his set of abilities. Suffers (than deals) more damage, makes it more resilient to traps, if Undying triggers, the Overlord has more HP to go through! But it's also really ok as it is.

Zara is strange but somewhat ok...it's just her picture isn't really fitting since she carries a bow...Otherwise, she's ok.

Master Aln'da'ri, doesn't convince me. First: I can't just see any sign of "ranged" on him (his herosheet should be entirely switched with Zara's one on that side...). I believe that having 6 skills printed is also very odd for the following reason: in Vanilla Descent you actually start with MORE skills than the allowed maximum, which is 5! In Advanced Campaign you can choose among a great variety of skills, but in the end, you always start with just one, so spending so many BPs there means he just wastes BPs which might have been spent on better stats (especially Fatigue which he needs to trigger his ability). On top of that, you still have a maximum Feats hand size of 4, so again, the BPs you spent on extra skills go somewhat wasted. It's not like I don't like the concept...it's just he's not the kind of character I'd ever pick, unless I badly needed a filler for my group. Oh, and CT4 with those stats and overall abilities is also very bad and limits his use as a melee character a lot, since melee fighters tend to expose themselves a lot and It doesn't seem like he can survive more than a couple strikes. I wouldn't even know how to advice you in order to fix this guy.

Hataya: nice picture, such a pity for the low res. First consideration: why didn't you write dow 4 in the Skill section and added it as an ability? Again the problem is similar to that of the Master, but limited to AC. Drawing 4 Subterfuge skills costs you 190 BPs (more than half of the 360 you're aiming at) for a character that will only have 1 after all at the beginning of the campaign...is it really wothwhile? The "multipurpose" thing is also nice, but really, if you want a Runner-like character you should invest in a couple more Fatigue and/or 1 more speed. Also, she looks to me as if she should have at least 1 die in melee...but that's just fluff. Anyway, moving her BP value to 363, you could make her 4Fatigue, 5Speed, reduce her Subterfuge Skills from 4 to 3 and move 1 trait die from Ranged to Melee. Actually you trade 1 traid die in Ranged for a point of Speed (which should be considered generally better, since you can buy dice but not Speed and she already starts with two black dice and Bleed adding a White die actually...besides her scout skill will work better like this), and 1 subterfuge skill for +2Fatigue, which is clearly ok, since there is a subterfuge skill giving you +2Fatigue, so the two things are somewhat comaprable. Like this, she should be far bettere in AC.

Swift Talnir: look, I love Dwarves...And what I know about dwarves is they should sport high Armor, low Speed, average or higher Fatigue. I also love this Dwarf Picture and I've made a sheet for him worth 358BPs which gave him the Grian Ashbringer Bleed Ability variant, Bleed to his attacks and (I modified my editor a bit allowing an additional perk on Grian's ability) the Immunity to Bleed...AND completely different stats. 12HP 0Armor isn't a Dwarven build...at all. 3Fatigue, 5Speed make things even worse. The build is that of a friggin pointy-ears, not a proud stout! Also, I don't believe he carries an axe on his back for show. For 356 points, I'd modify him like this: 8HP, 2Armor, 4Fatigue, 3Speed, 1Melee+2Ranged traits, 1Fighting+2Subterfuge skills, abilities and CT the same. Much more dwarven, slower but has more fatigue and 8HP 2Armor is much stronger build for 3CT than 12HP, 0Armor. Loses one trait die on Ranged, but having Bleed and Elixir of Wrath he should be able to inflict serious damage to anyone anyway. Having access since the very beginning to Fighting skills, instead of just Subterfuge may be very nice since there are skills like Unmovable or Knight that would make him just monstruous combined with the Elixir and his now 2Armor. And like that he'd be much more dwarven...definitely.

These are just my opinions, by the way...

Tadask Nezerull said:

Not especially. Even with both the Skilled and Swift skills, the sum of her speed and fatigue is still no better than some heroes start with (before skills).

Elric of Melniboné said:

There is no maximum on skills in vanilla.

Heroes with more or less than 3 starting skills created in my editor are unlikely to be balanced for RtL, though, because starting with an additional skill option is presumably worth rather less than starting with an actual additional skill .

Elric of Melniboné said:

I made Talnir the way he is because he's different. The idea behind him is that he was supposed to be far removed from his dwarven racial norms. After all, there's always gonna be someone that's different. As for Hataya, I didn't make her, my friend who's Overlording did, which I forgot to mention, and one of the other hero players made Zara.

Also, anywhere I put the skills or stats in the ability window, it's because the version of Iams I managed to come across doesn't support skills or traits higher than 3.