After playing a bunch of quests and reading the others the base game quests put a high importance in mobility Grisban seems extremely underpowered. With 1 awareness he is always the target of tripwires, negating his movement, which he only has 3 to start with. His heroic ability will only ever trigger with disease, as immobilize will go straight away perform the ability triggers, stun is removed as an action, and poison is a strength roll to resist which he has 5. Disease doesn't even do much as his willpower is 3. The heroic feat is nice I will admit but does not negate the extreme downsides. If there was a quest where you only had to kill all the monsters and there was no time limit then he might be able to achieve something but I have not come across a quest like that so far.

Very interested to hear any thoughts on any point raised.

Did you consider using all his 4 stamina to move each turn and use rest instead of a movement action?

As with all heroes that have higher stamina then movement, they should use fatigue to move each turn I guess.

If you only use movement actions he really might be very slow.

Also using fatigue to move negates traps totally, because they only stop your movement action, not your movement using stamina.

KingLz said:

Tripwire still gets him on the second move if he needs to double move and he will need to given 90% of the encounters. Also means he can't use rage and any fatigue damage he receives on the OL turn negates this strategy.

Also pit trap destroys you with fatigue movement as it stuns you.

Sounds like you've had a bit of bad luck running him then. I had no problems playing him (as a Berserker) at Realms of Terrinoth, and the OL there clearly knew what he was doing. I did a lot of what KingLz said as well, burning fatigue to move, and resting to get it all back. OL only managed to tripwire me three times, and we played all the way through the interlude.

Hopefully you have better luck with him, but he is in no way the "worst hero", if such a thing really exists.

Muppetbrown said:

As others have pointed out, Grisban is likely to be resting every round and using fatigue to move.

His heroic ability works against immobilised, as that normally lasts until the end of the turn. In fact, in some scenarios, I have found him more mobile as a result (against Meriods and the like). He's the only hero who can move 7 squares on the turn he starts immobilised.

It's a good fall back for poison and disease too.

Skywalker said:

That doesn't work. Grisban's heroic ability specifically says he removes the condition when he recovers fatigue from performing a rest action. When taking a rest action fatigue is recovered at the end of the turn so he can't remove immobilize until it would have went away naturally ie at the end of the turn. He already has a 91% chance to discard poison so a minor boost at best. Disease is the only condition his heroic ability works on and disease is pretty rare. His heroic ability is bad to the point I would recommend house ruling it to he removes the condition on resting rather then on recovering fatigue to make it of at least occasional use.

Yes he can use fatigue to move but so can every other hero so they have much greater flexibility. Using fatigue move allows him to break even at a distance of 4 hexes to a move 4 hero. Anything greater then 4 and he is still at a disadvantage (costs 1 more fatigue from 5-7, 2 more fatigue at 8-10 and he can't go beyond 10) and of course this is assuming he never spends fatigue on skills.

He is flat out the worst hero. That said he isn't so bad taking him is going to doom you. The variance in dice rolls makes a much larger difference then him lagging behind a bit.

Good point re Immobilised. I may adopt that house rule as a result

Even so, I don't think he is the flat out worst hero given his stats and other skills, but I agree his heroic ability isn't particularly strong. Mobility is not his strength period, so a lack of it isn't an issue IMO

Ratcur said:

He is the worst hero as a barbarian, use him as a Knight. Oath of Honor allows him to move 4 spaces and get an attack with one action and a fatigue. Since you do not actualy 'move' you are immune to tripwires and pit traps in this action. Then you are in prime situation to triple attack with your once per game or whatever. Advance gets him moving even faster and more attacks, again for one fatigue. Defend is fantastic on him because of his extremely high HP and ability to eat Disease and Poison and use other abilities to still move through immobilize, Not to mention he is fantastic in 4 player games for taking up the rear and stopping any reinforcements from coming from behind while the other 3 players work on the objective. Yes he isn't a great berserker, and yes he is to slow for a 2 player game, but if you play intelligently he is definitely not bad.

Draffut said:

Knight is a more mobile profession than the barbarian so I would certainly recommend it but that said everything you have pointed out is equally true for Syndrael or any other warrior, in fact for Advance Syndrael is better as it is based on speed so he can move farther. Once you start paying fatigue to use abilities you no longer have the option of using fatigue to make up for his slow base move so the difference between Grisban and Syn gets larger as the game continues. Syn can do every trick you listed Knight wise but has a better heroic ability (not great mind you just that Grisban's is useless), a better heroic feat (2 free moves for the party vs 1 attack), and is faster but with less health in a game which emphasis races over combat. To be fair some of the conversion kit warriors might be worse the Grisban.

Be careful with Oath of Honor movement as it automatically goes to the closest square adjacent to the monster allowing some tricky plays. Set up properly you can teleport past monster blockades and then go running off to hit objectives, although again Syn will be much better at this than Grisban. You are not immune to pit traps with Oath of Honor just tripwires. Tripwires require the hero to take a move action while pit traps just require the hero to enter an empty space. As placing a hero in space has them entering it tripwire will stun the hero before he takes the oath of honor attack and then a 2nd action will have to be used to get rid of the stun.

I can say one thing for sure about Grisban, buying the Iron Axe is a must. He doesn't move much, yes, but after buying that axe and one shotting everything including the elites I find him still fun to use. I teamed up with him and Jaina and had a terrible win/lose ratio in the first 5 quests but upon buying the new axe and purchases the Brute card for him the tides turned in my favor.

I find in any game, whether board or video, there is almost always no such thing as the "worst" character. The only thing you can say is that the person playing it just doesn't know how to use it right. I find that, properly used, any character can be an asset in game. Some may take a little more thinking to use. but that doesn't mean it's a horrible character.

Ratcur said:

The FAQ says: Grisban’s hero ability should read, “Each time you perform a rest action, you may immediately discard 1 Condition card from yourself.”

An interesting fact about Grisban is that his heroic trait is even worse in the German version of the game. In the German version, it's imprinted that he loses all defense dice in the turn in which he uses his heroic feat. I can't understand why there is such a difference between the English and the German version.

Try grisban as a knight - this class often helps to cover movement issues thanks to its skills who are movement orientated (oath of honor, advance, etc.) you still can give him hard hitting weapons instead of shields and he will wreck stuff =)

Graf said:

Surprising indeed. !

If you use the Errata that changes the way his Heroic Ability works then he does become much more useful.

The errata states that he can remove a condition as soon as he declares a rest action. That is great when you get immoblised. Just rest for your first action, remove Immobilise, fatigue move 4 squares, still leaving you with another action and all your fatigue back at the end of your turn.

Once you start using the Errata'ed version he becomes much more versatile. I was using him and the skeleton to block Merriods from hitting my other heroes, So much so that the OL now never tries to use Merriods and other immobilising tricks.

He is brilliant as a knight with the errata. Not tried him as a berserker though.

Morthai said:

You can do that? I thought only the knight could use the knight cards.

Younion said:

You are correct. Once you assign a Warrior archetype the Knight class only he/she can use the Knight skill cards. What is the "that" you are referring to?