Bleached Lizards Dungeon loadout sheets: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/filepage/35635 are excellent and exactly what I was planning to do myself.

For those who dont know, they allow the Overlord to populate the dungeon level with their choice of monsters, purchased with 'points' and subject to restrictions. A great idea.

However, I want to take things a step further. The sheet has the base costs for monsters, with Beastmen being 3, but also Ferrox and Deep Elves also being 3. In my opinion, these monsters are better that Beastmen, so I think should cost more.

So, my idea is to have Beastmen cost 10 and then try and fit in everything around that. Maybe have Kobolds costing 3/4, Ferrox costing 12ish. Before I start on this, has anyone done anything similar and got any pointers?

Thanks.

Paul Grogan said:

I think Beastmen are actually pretty good. That +2 damage means they pack a bigger punch than even a blood ape (red-yellow, +2), and then in the presence of a master, they're red-yellow, +3. This means white beastmen can easily do 6-7 damage, something most white copper monsters are not capable of. I will spawn beastmen whenever I can, mainly for that red guy with command, and the white ones make great blockers with claws that will damage the heroes if they ignore them.

Indeed, a Deep Elf has the same damage potential as a Beastman in RtL, it is only slightly tougher, and fares actually worse against unarmored targets. So, a Deep Elf should cost perhaps 11 when a beastman costs 10. You can waive the difference, IMHO.

Exactly the help I need. Thanks guys. I guess I'm just always used to seeing heroes with some armour, so always think the Deep Elves are better. Of course, with my new system, if Beastmen come out at 10, and the others come out valued around 9 or 11 I'll realise that I'm probably wasting my time, and they are better 'balanced' than I thought.

How about the bigger monsters?

Chaos Beasts, Demon, Dragon, Ice Wyrm, Giant. Are they all as good as one another in peoples opinions?

I remember that load-out sheet; at the time, I raised some criticisms in terms of the balancing cost of monsters, and made (what I thought) was a more expressing point-cost system. It didn't necessarily mesh though with Bleached-lizard's "discounting" based on monster type and the like.

I strongly disagree that a Beastman is anywhere near as good as a Deep Elf for dungeon placement. For a "punisher" spawn, yes, they do fine because they are just pure damage, but for creatures that start on the map, they are abysmal. This is because of their incredibly low projection of power - they move only 4 spaces and are easily one-shotted by pretty much anything. It is very easy as Heroes to ensure that any Beastmen that start on the map are either dead, or more than 4 spaces away, making them a non-issue. A Deep Elf, on the other hand, is 1 faster (which doesn't sound like much, but does help), is MUCH tougher (as in, can't really be one-shotted at maximum upgrade), and most importantly, has Shadowcloak. Shadowcloak is really an excellent ability, since it means the Deep Elves can't just be sniped off from a position of safety like slow Beastmen can, AND makes them effectively immune to crowd-control like Blast and Breath. What's more, while a Copper white Deep Elf hits only as hard a Copper white Beastman, a Diamond white Deep Elf hits MUCH harder than a Diamond white Beastman. And while Command 3 on the masters is indeed awesome, so is Pierce 10 and Frost (and if you're NOT facing at least one hero with around 10 armor, you're a lucky man anyway)...

Here is the ranking I came up. It's not perfect, but it's a reasonable compromise on simplicity versus expressiveness. You could simply double all the numbers I list if it would make it easier to apply level-specific discounts and the like.

Kobold: 1

Kobold-M, Skeleton, Spider, Beastman: 2

Hellhound, Sorcerer, Razorwing, Ferrox: 3

Skeleton-M, Spider-M: 4

Beastman-M, Hellhound-M, Sorcerer-M, Razorwing-M, Ferrox-M, Deep Elf, Ogre, Manticore, Golem: 5

Naga, Blood Ape, Troll: 6

Deep Elf-M, Ogre-M, Manticore-M, Golem-M: 7

Naga-M, Blood Ape-M, Troll-M, Giant, Chaos Beast, Dragon, Demon: 8

Giant-M, Chaos-Beast-M, Dragon-M, Demon-M: 10

I worked on a similar system to try to reverse engineer some maps for any possible system FFG was using, but had little success. Though in general, I found a point scheme that at the time we all agreed was probably closer, and it did involve a small boost to the weaker monsters in terms of points, which led to a better scale in my opinion. I believe I started at 5 for a kobold. When you are wokring on this system, my advice is to take a well armored 4 pt character and a 2 pt squishy and pit them against about 4 of the monster (or whatever, but be consistent, and have each encounter seperate - no 4 pt guy getting in the way and blocking for the 2 pt squishy).

Anyway, figure out how much damage is being done, how useful they are generally, etc and have a really good feel for each monsters capabilities against the two extremes and then ask yourself - how many kobolds would I want to play to make up for not playing one of these guys? Scale everything around whatever it is you consider weakest (spiders comes to mind). Ask yourself the same thing for the masters too - but don't think of it in the sense that all masters are going to be 1.5 or 1.x times better- because that's just wrong - certain masters get huge ability bonuses that more than make up for the shoddy extra point of health...

Anyway, have a go at it, let us know what you come up with. I'm certain my opinions of certain monsters values are changing all the time, so I won't post my list here.

Don't forget that Bleached Lizard's loadout sheets also feature discounts for monsters - the Beastman is at an advantage against the Deep Elf there, as he receives discount far more often. Often, these discounts allow you to buy 3 Beastmen OR one Deep Elf, meaning that the Elf is still quite rare.

As for big monsters, I certainly would not price a Giant same as a Demon - the Demon has better defense with Fear, and a powerful ranged attack with Sorcery, and Aura to deter annoying melee fighters. Sure, the giant can strike multiple foes, but with his laughable speed, heroes have to be quite stupid to allow him to do that. Likewise, I think that a Chaos Beast may be nice, but is weaker than a Demon, especially because its Black Curse does not improve, while the Demon enjoys both Fear and Aura upgrades.

The_Immortal said:

Good point. I much prefer Beastmen as spawns, but when it comes to dungeon loadouts the Deep Elf is far superior.