Hello fellow players. I am still a newcomer in Descent but nonetheless, I have made a dozen heroes for fun and — why not — for actual use

For the time being, I only have vanilla Descent in my possession, so the heroes I have made should be aimed at those good old 9 vanilla quests. I have not been able to test them with my buddies yet, so I guess some balance issues will speak for themselves as I see those heroes in action.

I'd like to have your thoughts on my creations, and especially critics on how to improve them.

(Please note that I am French, and that I have made the following hero sheets ready for printing and personal use. As such, the heroes' names and especially their abilities will appear in French on the sheets. Being too lazy to edit the .jpg, I'll merely translate the ability right under the image.

Also, note that the pictures I have used for my heroes were shamelessly stolen from Heroes of Newerth and random Google Image finds.

Finally, I did not use Antistone's Hero Generator for my heroes — instead, I have more or less followed the official Make-a-Hero document thing as far as stat/dice/etc. distribution are concerned.)

• Roderick Gildedbow:

[Chivalry: during the heroes' turn, if Roderick is the last hero to be played, he gains +1 speed and +2 damage until the end of this turn.]

The idea behind this character was to have a capable runner & damage dealer but with a slight original twist that I hope will have a somewhat tactical impact, especially in 4-heroes games.

• Letholdus the brave:

[Tenacity: Letholdus gains +1 armor for each adjacent monster (starting above the second one)]

A pretty good tanking character that should force the Overlord to be careful when placing his monsters.

• Throgg the glutonous:

[Feast: Throgg always carries around a snack that he enjoys finishing with an after-dinner liquor. The effects of healing potions Throgg quaffs are doubled.]

Pretty straightforward hero ability right there (I like to add flavor text every now and then for fun). Kinda unsure if +6 HP healing potions will be overpowered in the long run.

That's it for now. I have ~10 more heroes left that I'll post below if people are interested in them.

Thanks in advance for your feedback!

They generally look pretty good - better balanced and more interesting than most people's efforts to be honest.

I think Throgg could do with some adaption. 16W1A is an uncertain tipping point with 3-4CT values. I feel he is a bit underdone with only 2 skills. If you added another skill, and upped him to 16/2 for 4CT then he'd feel about right to me. 16/2 for 4 (standard), slightly higher than average stats, but a relatively weak ability to compensate. I'd probably make it a Rogue skill instead of a Combat skill, just to keep a little off specialisation. But this might not be necessary - he fits in a sort of grey area I think, rather than being clearly overpowered or underpowered. I just don't see him having enough bonuses to make up for that lack of a 3rd skill as he is, yet if you give it too him straight he has slightly too much...

I don't like the idea of giving bonuses based on hero turn order; it seems like it's at cross-purposes with the idea of letting heroes choose their turn order in the first place, and it feels contrived to me. I can't easily think of anything "in world" that it could represent, or any obvious design goal that it serves.

Kind of like, say, giving heroes a bonus when they're attacking from the north, I can imagine that it might be an interesting and integrated mechanic in some hypothetical game, but retrofitting it into an existing game seems a dubious proposition.

• On Throgg: his armor value is 1 because I did not want him to feel like a tank. To me, he is a melee damage dealer with 5 fatigue that allow him better positioning and bonus damage. Granted, fighting in melee with 1 armor may seem a bit suicidal — this is where his ability comes into play. This is how I see this hero's gameplay — like I said I haven't had the chance to test them yet

The reason why he has only 2 starting skills is because I followed the official Make-a-hero rules and I think that by giving him 16 wounds, 5 fatigue, etc. he didn't end up with enough points to get a third starting skill, although I agree 1 subterfuge skill is clearly better than 1 fatigue.

• On Roderick: I understand it may feel clunky to take away the players' freedom to choose the heroes' order during their turn. However it's not like Roderick is utterly useless if for some reason he is not played last. I had in mind to give the hero a couple nice bonuses if the heroes build their turn around the ability. This should not feel mandatory. On the other hand I didn't want the bonus to be really weak, because it would have ended up with the heroes not caring at all about it and just forgetting it altogether.

Antistone, do you feel Roderick's ability is too powerful and that in the end, the heroes will be forced to play most of their turn based around it? Or do you simply hate such mechanics in the first place (regardless of the bonus granted by his ability)?

Anyways, thank you for taking some of your time to read & answer

I like the balance of your characters, they seem very fair. If you want a balance "tool" for them, instead of using the official pdf, try download Antistone's Herogen. It's far better.

My comments go along the same lines as Corbon's...unsure about the last one...but overall a really really good job on my opinion.

Alright, here's a new batch of heroes

• Tundra:

[Frost Aura: monsters within two spaces of Tundra have -2 speed on their turn]

At first I had given Tundra a -1 speed reduction aura, but then it felt weak to me against Grapple (I know heroes cannot get Grapple in vanilla, but I want to make a hero with it ). Then again, what I had in mind with this Frost Aura was to give a tool for Tundra to escape in case he gets ganged up on.

• Ruse:

[Feint: Ruse can choose to re-roll the dice twice instead of once whenever she does an Aimed attack or a Dodge .]

Ruse should be tanking and use her Dodge order as often as possible to reduce incoming damage.

• Avatar of Life:

[Flesh of my Flesh: during her turn, the Avatar of Life may sacrifice any amount of her health points and give them to any hero within 3 spaces of her]

I've always been bugged that Descent (at least vanilla Descent) did not have what I could consider support heroes. Here's one of those I have made. I am kind of unsure about her being too tanky if the heroes decide to give her heavy armor, making her really hard to kill for the Overlord. As such, I am hesitating to add the line "The Avatar of Life cannot wear any armor" in her hero ability, or leave it that way but buff her Conquest Value to 4.

What do you guys think?

Tundra feels pretty much ok as far as balance goes, but the wording of his ability is of the kind that can cause thousand questions and difficult situations. I'd reccomend changing it to:

"Monsters suffer -2 Speed during any activation they start within 3 spaces of Tundra."

Perhaps there are even better wordings.

Ruse...her statline is far too high for 3CT with 16HP/1Arm, even if you take into account her only 2 dice in melee. As for the ability, sincerely I don't like the idea of re-roll-than-re-roll mechanic. Most game systems don't allow to reroll a die more than once and that's for good. I'd try something different...how about:

"Whenever Ruse discards a Dodge order, she automatically places an Aim Order on herself and viceversa." It feels like feint and might be fun. Perhaps some more wording is needed, but something along those lines should be good. And with those stats, really: CT4.

The Avatar of Life is almost ok, but I'd limit her ability to once per turn and at the beginning of it, which requires a bit of strategical positioning. Also the hero player using it must be careful, because he has to lower his HP before taking the turn, hence before becoming target of traps and stuff. More tactical and overall more "exploitable" by the Overlord.

My two cents.

Fenrick Marlowe said:

I suspect that heroes' turn order is usually flexible enough that almost any bonus for going last would cause that hero to go last around 90% of the time, unless perhaps they are the party's designated runner, which at 4 fatigue/4 speed seems distinctly unlikely. But I also dislike the concept as a matter of principle.

Fenrick Marlowe said:

I don't understand the French, but in English that definitely seems unclear in how it interacts with monsters that are within two spaces of Tundra for only part of their turn. The obvious clarification would be monsters that begin their activation within 2 spaces, but that makes it rather worthless for helping Tundra escape, since any monster affected by it will still be able to reach him on that activation.

But I'm not sure that a passive ability to help a hero "escape" is a good idea, since it will inevitably lead to kiting (also called "winning retreat", where the hero attacks and move back each turn, but the monster chasing him never gets close enough to attack). Especially because the slowest monsters in Descent are already cripplingly slow (ogres, giants, etc.), to the point where they're generally only useful under highly specific circumstances even if the heroes have no counter-move, while the fastest monsters are ranged attackers and would probably barely notice this ability, so really the only effective use of such an ability would probably be to abuse it for kiting. And a hero willing to forego attacking can already escape essentially any situation where a slowing aura would help.

Grapple requires the hero to be adjacent to an affected monster, and therefore can allow a hero to sacrifice themselves while others escape, but can't be used for kiting. Though it's also a very absolute ability, and heroes having it can cause problems.

For Enduring Evil , I created an ability called Entrap that's like a weakened form of Grapple: adjacent enemies must spend 1 extra movement point for each space they move per rank of Entrap affecting them, but large monsters can ignore 1 rank of Entrap per space they occupy beyond the first (like the errata for Knockback). This allows a hero with about 3-5 Entrap to "almost Grapple" small monsters without completely immobilizing giants, and small amounts are still quite effective at shielding allies (since a monster moving past you usually needs to move through several adjacent spaces) while being only mildly helpful in stopping an enemy from running away. You might consider something similar.

• On Ruse: I understand re-rolling twice kind of goes against the rules, but I thought it was pretty original. Again, I have not been able to test my heroes in a game, so I guess it may not be that cool after all. I like your updated Feint idea, Elric. I am changing her ability to yours right now I guess it does need a bit of additional wording to mention Ruse cannot indefinitely combo Aim -> Dodge -> Aim -> Dodge -> etc., obviously.

• On Avatar of Life: for some reason I wanted to tone her down a little (like I said, by adding 1 to her Conquest value or by making her unable to wear armor at all), but your proposition may solve my problem even better. I might change her sheet as well. And yes, what I had in mind with this hero was to have the player controlling her not to go trigger happy and heal away without a single care, but instead to play carefully and keep an eye on her wounds.

Antistone said:

You are right: in French I have clearly mentioned that the speed reduction applies at the beginning of the monster's activation: I have translated my own text a bit too hastily and forgot that part. It is not meant to slow down a monster as it passes near Tundra. My bad! And now that I think of it, yeah: that doesn't make it an escape mechanism. Instead it is designed to slow down a retreating monster or to annoy the Overlord when he wishes to place his monsters, although it is situational.

Now, I got to admit I had not thought at all of abusing the Freezing Aura to kite monsters — and I definitely don't what that to happen.

What I wanted to do with this Freezing Aura was to have something less powerful that Grapple, but with a wider range. At the end of the day, it ends up more overpowered. I had realized that Grapple has its drawback because the "grappling" hero needs to stay in melee and thus exposes himself to danger.

I like your Entrap ability. I might actually use it (at rank 2 according to your rules) for Tundra because it actually sticks closer to the "defense/escape" ability I initially wanted for him, and those fat ogres and giants won't be affected, preventing abusive kiting (Tundra will only bother one-space monsters, and they tend to die real fast anyway). However I am still unsure concerning the range for the Freezing Aura: should I keep it to 3 or tone it down to 2?

About Ruse, how about:

"Ruse may have both an Aim and a Dodge order readied at the same time. Whenever Ruse places an Aim order, she also places a Dodge order and viceversa." This wording should avoid any loop and confer the double Aim/Dodge thing anyway...I suppose.

I'm trying right now to balance her using antistone's editor, and as I told you already she's far too overgrown statwise to stand at 3CT. Actually, she's too powerful even for 4CT. If you take away a skill from her, she should be almost ok, though.

I believe that the French version of Tundra's ability is ok. Having enemies beginning the turn within 3 spaces lose 2 speed doesn't make their turn useless and is pretty annoying anyway for the overlord. Seems balanced to me.

Also, I don't think Avatar requires that much rearrangement on her sheet. Perhaps two less fatigue and one more speed would fit her better, though.

When I'm referring to Antistone's editor I do it because it's a very nice "balancing" tool even when you're designing characters with your own abilities. It gives you an idea about how powerful should an ability be on a character with certain stats/dice/skills/CT. And yes, it's far better than the Original Heromaker (although I don't blame that much characters made with it, still better balanced than a few from the original game).

Oh, and you make fine characters with single and pretty easy and straightforward abilities...I like your style. I hope I'll manage to do something like this in the near future, since most of my custom heroes tend to be a bit complex and less...genuine.

Elric of Melniboné said:

Wouldn't that end up being silly? I believe the rules state that being hit while have a readied Aim order makes your lose that order. So if Ruse Dodges, she would gain Aim as well, but if she is attacked she'll lose that order.

I have changed her to what you initially proposed (when she discards a Dodge, she is given a free Aim order and vice-versa, with a bit of explanation preventing the 'infinite loop') because it ends up being a bit better IMO.

I'll remove some of her stats because she clearly is too powerful (I have no idea what I was thinking when I made her). I'd rather remove 1 fatigue & 1 speed instead of 1 starting skill because as it is, she could be a very potent runner while I initially wanted her to be a semi-tank semi-damage dealer.

I'll try and use Antistone's generator for my future heroes and maybe to do a balance check in my current heroes.

Ah, and thank you for your support and kind words

Oh yeah, a friend of mine warned me that I have made a mistake on the Letholdus translation. It should read:

[Tenacity: Letholdus gains +1 armor for each adjacent monster (starting FROM the second one)] (and not above the second one).

Does that make him too powerful?

Well, I'm not sure about that...he's fine on my opinion...building him with the editor, he would probably end up being a bit over the average, but nothing as unbalanced as many other characters. I believe he's an ok tank. The Overlord has to make some strategical maneouvres to harm him, and he almost neutralizes Swarm...but I don't think it makes him the best tank in the game so far...just a really nice one. Ok to me.

Alright now, I had a dozen remaining heroes to show but I have had the chance to try most of them in actual games and for the time being I do not need feedback on them.

However I am making heroes for my buddies (i.e. they choose their names, sometimes their pictures, but mainly their roles). I was given total freedom concerning their stats and their special abilities. I wanted to create fun abilities that differ from the simpler "Your hero has +2 passive damage" ones. Anyways, once again I'd like to have your opinion before printing them:

• Mihawk:

[War Stomp: During his turn, Mihawk may spend 2 movement points in order to place 1 Stun token on each adjacent figure to him (friend and foe regardless)]

This special ability I was unsure of. I need your opinion because I think it may be a bit too powerful. I have tried playing around with its cost, and eventually gave up a fatigue cost for a movement point cost, although I was thinking of adding 1 fatigue in addition to the 2 MP. I also gave the ability a drawback so that in encourages thoughtful use and placement as friendly heroes may be stunned as well.

• Shaar-Lun:

[Pyromancy: Shaar-Lun's successful magic attacks cause Burn]

OK now this kinda (totally) goes against what I said earlier on concerning passive abilities, but then again the friend that this hero is for hasn't played yet, so I wanted to give him something pretty easy to use (and to put it simple, he loves the concept of Fire Mages in fantasy). However I feel it may be too weak when compared to a flat '+2 damage' or a '+2 free surge bonus' that some vanilla heroes have.

I was thus thinking of changing Shaar-Lun's special ability to "When Shaar-Lun successfully damages a figure with a magic attack, place 2 Burn tokens on that figure"

I'll make more heroes later; getting a bit late here in good old France Thanks in advance for your critics.

Mihawk is quite overpowered. His stats/dice/skills chassis at 3CT are worth 381/360 BPs using antistone's editor...which already tells you he's a bit too much...and the ability is also nice. I believe you should lower his Fatigue to 3 and move 1 Fighting Skill to Subterfuge (which may also be good, since subterfuge skills give access to a wide range of movement enhancing abilities). Like that he would be almost ok...ALMOST: add a "once per turn" to his ability or else he can stun the same enemies several times in a turn, practically disabling them for 2-3 turns, which is very lame.

Shaar-Lun is about ok...actually he can buy something more and still be legal. If you want a very pyromaniac character, how about the following:

"Shaar-Lun is immune to the Burn ability and effects of Lava tiles and his attacks have the Burn ability. Whenever an enemy enters a space adjacent to Shaar-Lun, it gets a Burn token."

Like this he gets to 354 with Herogen, which is pretty much ok. Otherwise you can leave him as he is, slightly underpowered, but still very ok.

If you created other heroes, why don't you post them? I'd be very interested in seeing what they are like!

• On Mihawk : it had to happen once again: his ability is meant to be used once per turn indeed (poor wording on my behalf). That being said, I knew there was something fishy about this character. To fix this, lowering his fatigue looks OK. Regarding his starting skills... at first I feared that it'd be a big deal for the hero to have the +2 speed card, so I refrained from giving him 1 Sub. Then again... Doesn't seem that game breaking now that I think of it. Chaing his sheet right away

• On Shaar-Lun: your suggestion looks nice. I had something else in mind as well but I fear it may be too situational: "[in addition to Shaar-Lun's Burn on attacks]. When a Burn token is placed on Shaar-Lun and you fail to roll a surge to remove it, Shaar-Lun gains heals 1 wound instead of losing it."

Either that or "When you roll a surge and remove a Burn token, you are healed for 2 wounds."

That would fit into the pyromaniac thingy, with fire cauterizing his wounds, and be a bit more fun that simply being immune to Burn, but then again there isn't a ton of monsters that use Burn to begin with (reminder: I have vanilla Descent, although I plan to buy Tomb of Ice pretty soon). I don't feel any of those two abilities would be too powerful, what bugs me a bit is that they're going to be maybe a bit too situational (only Dragons have it in vanilla; and thankfully the other monster in the whole game that has it are Lava Beetles in ToI ).

And what about posting your playtested ones?

I really like your designing abilities so I'm pretty interested!

I will Below are the 3 remaining soon-to-be tested heroes I have made.

• Belliak the Bold:

[shield Bash: after rolling a successful melee attack, Belliak may exhaust the shield he is currently wielding and add (1 + X) damage to the attack ( X = the shield's block value)] (addendum: while not mentioned on the card, it is implied that Belliak cannot use Shield Bash if his shield is exhausted)

Although is may seem oddly phrased, I had to put a name on something that did not have any (that I know of, at least): the number that indicates how many wounds are cancelled when you exhaust your shield after receiving an attack. This is what I called "block value".

That being said, I am rather proud of this special ability since it combines what I like to see in a hero's special ability: originality, risk VS reward mechanics, and a "scalability" with time and/or gear. To put it simple, if Belliak uses his ability at every turn, he will do +2 damage once per turn with the shop shield, +3 damage/turn with copper treasure shield, +4 damage/turn with silver treasure shield, and +5 damage/turn with gold treasure shield (assuming he manages to loot the shield). After some thinking, I chose to use the shield's "block value" and add 1 so that his damage does not suck.

Bear in mind that Belliak can only use his ability once per turn (if he chooses to do a Battle action, he won't be able to shield bash twice since after the first bash his shield will be exhausted). I think Belliak's special ability is on par with heroes that have a flat +2 damage bonus (like Carthos): if Belliak attacks twice during his turn, he gets an average of +1 damage (with shop shield). Carthos would get an average of +2 damage. With copper treasure shield, Belliak has an average of +1,5 damage; then +2 with silver; then +2,5 with gold. It may end up being a bit better than a flat +2 damage on every attack, but you have to keep in mind that in the early game, it is weaker, and that Belliak also need to upgrade his shield if he wants to increase this damage.

Since heroes refresh equipment (and thus shields) at the beginning of their turn, Belliak has to carefully decide if he wants to exhaust his shield for extra damage during his turn, or if he should keep it ready for the Overlord's turn in case a monster attacks. This is the kind of risk VS reward thing that I really like to put into my heroes' abilities as much as possible.

The only drawback I have with this hero is that at the end of the day, he may feel pigeon-holed into wearing a one-handed weapon + a shield or else he sucks. Then again, I have tried to give him a tank-ish feel with his other stats, so that would've probably been his fate anyway.

• Valgar the Deceitful:

[Visions of horror: Valgar has Fear X .
( X = Valgar's current Fatigue tokens divided by 2, then rounded down)]

Giving Fear to a hero may be a tad risqué , but here I am trying to pull it off nicely (although I may not surprised if it ends up being a total failure).

Valgar is a runner hero with his 5 speed and 4 fatigue. His special ability also allows him to make risky moves and end his turn near a few monsters.

To put it simply, depending on his remaining fatigue, Valgar has:
Fear 2 (when at 4 fatigue)
Fear 1 (when at 3 or 2 fatigue)
Nothing (when at 1 or 0 fatigue)

Trying once again to have a risk VS reward gameplay here, I know having a hero with Fear 2 may be frustrating for the Overlord player. However, if he wants to keep this bonus, Valgar has to seriously cripple his bonus movement points & black dice given that he'd get by using fatigue. Also, the stronger the monster, the less Valgar has a chance to negate incoming attacks (since the Overlord will roll more dice on stronger monster attacks and thus will have more chance to get surges). The DOOM! card will also become more crucial as it helps quite a bit against Valgar's Fear.

There is no issue concerning threat gain (+1 threat every 2 surges rolled on monster attacks) as I assume surges are not actually spent towards threat gain. What I mean is that if Valgar has Fear 2 and a monster attacks him and rolls 2 surges, the Overlord will gain 1 threat THEN the surges may be spent towards negating Fear 2. I think it's pretty obvious Valgar would clearly be overpowered if surges rolled on attacks against him and his "fear armor" would not count towards threat gained.

I did not give any Subterfuge starting skill to Valgar (although he is a runner hero) in order to avoid picking the Skilled card (+2 maximum fatigue) and thus beginning the game with Fear 3. However I am fine with the player buying a Subterfuge skill later on and hoping to get +2 maximum fatigue.

• Ennisay:

[Judgement: if Ennisay makes a killing blow on a monster, he may choose to gain 1 Fatigue token or 1 wound token. In addition, if that monster has Undying, it is completely ignored]

Probably the laziest of the bunch in terms of special ability, I just thought having a hero ignoring Undying would be a cool addition to a party. As I felt that only having "ignore Undying" as a skill seemed weak and situational, I gave Enissay the ability to gain 1 fatigue or 1 wound on each killing blow he makes. Both abilities seem pretty weak-ish individually, but I think having both on a single character makes a pretty good hero eventually.


These are the final heroes that I've tailored especially for my friends. Next time, I'll post my 'older' heroes, most of them having some play testing in their luggage

Belliak The Bold:
I had posted a hero with a similar shield bash ability a while ago. You can phrase it: "After rolling a successful melee attack, Belliak may exhaust a shield he's carrying (he might have two) to add +X damage to the attack, where X is equal to 1 plus the number of wounds the shield can prevent".
As for the rest he's a bit overpowered, statwise...give him 3 melee dice and 2 fighting skills (which is more fitting to the "beastly type" anyway, since it's more raw power and less technique) and he should be ok.

Valgar the Deceitful:
He's...ok, I guess.

Enissay:
Rewrite the second part of his ability as following: "Enissay's attacks ignore the Undying ability". Much clearer.
As for the rest, he's slightly overpowered. To balance him the best way is probably splitting his skills completely (1/1/1). After all, considering his "vampiric" and "purging" abilities, I guess some wizardry should be flavorful enough on him.

• On Belliak the Bold: yes, once again it is something I forgot to mention but that I thought of after posting anyway — Belliak can only exhaust one shield at a time when bashing, for obvious reasons. Now, stats-wise, when I made the character using the Make-a-Hero pdf, the build points would fit perfectly. I know I should use Antistone's HeroGen, but I do not even have Excel installed and I am a bit lazy to try and find it. Also since the starting idea was to make Belliak a tank hero, I had chosen to give him 2 trait die & 3 skills because for some reason when I think trait die I think "more damage", and when I think skills I see passive skills which increase survivability... which is not always true, indeed.

Oh and crap: I thought I was getting pretty innovative with my shield bash thing (I have read about dozens of custom heroes here and there and never saw anything like it)

• On Enissay: my wording comes off a bit clumsy sometimes, yeah (and it's not a translation problem: sometimes I even correct myself when translating for the purpose of sharing my heroes here).

Regarding his starting skills, I have a sort of "meh" feeling about it because Enissay is tailored to be a melee character (3 melee trait dice) and having 1 starting skill in each may end up to situations where after the initial draw, his Subterfuge skill is something that works when attacking with a ranged weapon, and his Magic skill is also something that works with magic attacks. And if the person playing Enissay is really unlucky, when swapping for a new skill, he may once again find himself with something that doesn't fit him. I'm OK with having 2 melee skills + 1 possibly useless Subterfuge skill VS 1 melee skill + 1 possibily useless Sub skill + 1 possibly useless magic skill. Unless I am mistaken, characters that have their skills split (1/1/1 like you said) also have split trait dice (or at least have two fighting types covered). So if I had to split Ennisay's skills, I guess I should also move around the trait dice (maybe go for 2/2/0 or 2/1/1...).

Here's a quick hero I just made:

• Corpse Trader:

[Morbid Dealing: when a monster is killed within two spaces of the Corpse Trader, he gains an additional 25 gold coins]

This hero should gain in power on the long run since he is going to get more and more gold (and thus buy more equipment, additional trait dice, skills...). By the looks of it, the Corpse Trader should be doing OK during the endgame (this is just speculation as this hero hasn't been tried yet. Final results may also depend on the quest: more monsters = more gold).

For the record, I had initially thought of having him gain corpse token (that I'd have printed) for every monster death, and these token could've been sold for 25 gold each at the market. After giving a bit of thought, this idea turned out to be more of a hassle than anything else: although it would have been kinda cool to have the Corpse Trader actually collect corpses, simply giving him the gold ended up having the same result.

Next time: my older heroes! For real!

With Corpse Trader you might even add a speed or fatigue point (whichever you see fit) and he'd still be ok.

Here we go, 3 more heroes. These heroes have been playtested, albeit testing is based on only one game (still, better than nothing).



• Cami of Blacksand:

[Nobo the monkey is your familiar. He has 4 speed. Anytime Nobo is adjacent to an attacking hero, they gain a free surge]

Pretty straightforward. I am happy with how the hero works, since using the pet monkey to its full potential requires a bit of organization and thinking, and since it offers a free surge, its power scales obviously well with the heroes as they gear up.

However now that I am looking at her stats, I'm afraid Cami may have a bit too much armor for her Conquest value.

• Jereziah:

[Holy radiance: At the beginning of the heroes' turn, every ally adjacent to Jereziah are healed for 1 wound. Jereziah cannot be healed himself by this ability]

In a perfect world, Jereziah would turn every hero he is playing with into Isphers (assuming all 3 heroes playing with Jereziah are able to end their turn adjacent to him). However, from what I have seen in an actual game, Jereziah's special ability is not THAT useful. I believe that the game I played (as the Overlord) where Jereziah was present, only 3 to 4 wounds were healed during the WHOLE game through his ability. Then again, the people I played with were playing their first game, so they weren't thinking too much about the power of a healing aura,as they were more focused on learning the game... I guess (the quest Jereziah was played on was Quest #1 from Journeys in the Dark).

I think Jereziah needs more playtesting on my behalf. After seeing how poorly he fared in the game we played, I was thinking of increasing his aura's range, or keeping its current range but increasing the healing done (maybe 2 wounds healed per turn). Still unsure about that.

• Fozzik the Elusive:

[Fozzik has Shadowcloak]
(the description on the original hero sheet is longer because I am actually explaining what Shadowcloak does, as I only have vanilla Descent and my players are not familiar with the effects of Shadowcloak)

Taking a look at Fozzik, I have no idea what I was thinking when giving him 4 starting Subterfuge skills (I may change his starting skills to 1 / 3 / 0 or even go for 0 / 3 / 0). Then again, Fozzik is pretty squishy, although his stats & Shadowcloak ability allow him to be hard to attack. The person who played him did not use Fozzik very wisely and he died quite a few times stupidly.

Cami: that familiar is broken as her stats for her CT are. 2 steps here. 1st: Her CT should be 4. 2nd: Nobo should be a carriable animal companion (like Pico The Empos, Alex The Wise, and Lightfinger, giving the extra surge to the character carrying it. Like that, she should be very ok.

Jereziah: Remove just 1 Wizardry skill and the guy is ok. Simple, nice, design, by the way. You don't need to specify he's not healed by his ability...just spell the ability like "Heroes adjacent to Jereziah at the beginning of the heroes' turn are healed for 1 wound." Jereziah cannot be adjacent to himself, so the rule is self-explanatory.

Fozzik: How about you remove 1 Subterfuge skill and add a single Ranged trait die. That would make him perfectly balanced.

Note: all my suggestions are based on the use of Herogen as a balancing tool, hence they may still be far from perfect.