I have been working on some custom Avatar's and would be interested in your thoughts. Click on the link below the image to see a larger image. Edit - Sorry I am finding it difficult to work with links and images on the new forums. I'm not sure what yours was linking to, but when I tested them I got a could not open site error. I have re-uploaded and tested images.

img17.imagevenue.com/img.php

and her Lieutenant:

[url=http://img34.imagevenue.com/img.php
[url=http://img13.imagevenue.com/img.php

Her Overlord Upgrades are:

(15) Poisoned Darts: In place of a Melee attack a Deep Elf may make a ranged attack exchanging the blue die for the normal red die, the attack also inflicts a sleep token.

(10) Task Masters: Whenever you place a Master Beastman you may instead replace it with a Master Deep Elf. Master Deep Elves gain Command.

(5) Lone Assassin: Add the Lone Assassin treachery card to the Overlord deck.

(5) Teleport: The Witch Elf may move to any space within her LOS for 5 movement. But she no longer has Shadowcloak.

(15) Dark Magic: In place of a regular attack the Witch Elf may make a magic attack exchanging the white die for her normal red die and use the Lightning Bolt template.

i'm not sure what happened, but one of those image links to me to a site that was certainly not work appropriate.

I really like the avatar power. Cool idea.

So...I think this is a great idea, and like using something rare like deep elves as your avatar. However, I have some concerns with a couple of the upgrades.

First off, 5 xp for a two monster treachery card when monster treachery otherwise costs you 20 apiece means you just got a)4 monster treachery total and b)it works out to 11.25 per. Granted, 2 of it is dedicated to one card and one card only, but...

When you then take into account that deep elves now can have command, make ranged attacks that put heroes to sleep, especially since these ranged attacks can hit whomever is close and then you have shadowcloak working in your favor. The command gives extra range, you have pierce 6 or whatever on a ranged attack plus whatever power dice. Now the beastmen and/or the master beastman in your (elite) beastman war party are hitting somebody without armor..it seems like a bit much to me...

but I could be wrong and I think the idea is pretty cool. I'd like to see a dark priest avatar, though...what he'll do with all that threat in his avatar fight is beyond me...since you can't use it.

Thank you for your comments. I see your point and it is something I have been thinking about. My reasoning is that very few dungeons use Deep Elves and there are only three figures which will limit their spawning. My goal is to increase their presence and to do that I included the Lone Assassin card without impacting Monster Treachery. Buying treachery allows you to choose cards that can suit the dungeon and the heroes, where as adding a specific card to the deck is more limited. You make a valid point and I'm considering increasing the cost to 10 for Lone Assassin.

I suppose the ranged attack should also not include the Pierce or Frost effects, that way their main damage will be in melee.

Here is a preview for my Dark Bishop (He's going to be really nasty and meant for advanced players):

img243.imagevenue.com/img.php

The Avatar power is interesting. It seems a bit worse than the Dragon OL in dungeons, but actually does something in encounters.

The keep location is only 2 spaces away from Talimar. You should really have it be 4 spaces away. 2 spaces means the heroes will never be able to get secret master training if the OL goes for a Talimar rush strategy.

Darts are a bit strong. If you made the ranged attack deal no damage, only a sleep token, it might work. But in general I'd be leery of allowing sleep tokens at all. Making it be a ranged attack with daze would be a lot more reasonable.

You have too many deep elf upgrades. If you look at the other Avatars, they will only have 1 upgrade that is specific to each monster type, to keep one type from getting too strong.

Task Masters is far too strong. With it all Beastman dungeon leaders will become deep elves, becoming much harder to kill. A master deep elf is a lot better than a master beastman, even without command. I'd get rid of this card entirely.

Teleport seems a bit weak, although this depends on the layout of the final battle. I'd let her keep shadowcloak. The ability seems like it will be either very weak or very strong though. If the final zone is large and she is warping 10 spaces, it strong, but in a smaller area then she may not want to move more than 5 spaces to begin with. What if instead of a tele it gave her 2 free movement points on each turn?

Dark Magic - I'd make these bolt attacks lose the frost ability. Double attacking and getting 2 frost tokens on multiple heroes would be a bit too strong.

Sleep is indeed a rather nasty effect. I'd stay away from it as well. Also, why not use photobucket or something? That site you are using is horrendous and ridden with things doing bad things to my browser.

A couple of suggestions.

Sleep is probably a little to strong of an effect, Stun however would work better I think. It reduces the hero's abilities without taking them completely out of the turn. I would also make the attack exchange the frost for the stun. Otherwise it is really powerfull. I would also cut the pierce in half for the ranged attack. Poisoned darts would then look like this:

(15) Poisoned Darts: In place of a Melee attack a Deep Elf may make a ranged attack exchanging the blue die for the normal red die, the attack also replaces frost with stun, and reduce the pierce by half (round up).

Instead of replacing all master beastmen with master dark elves, restrict it to spawns, and add an additional 2 threat per master deep elf to the cost of the spawn (this would be 4 threat for replacing both masters in the Elite beastman warparty treachery card). This would limit the effect somewhat, but still allow for more deep elves in play. The extra cost would help to balance the difference between the abilities of a master beastman and a master dark elf. I am not actually worried about giving command to the master deep elf as it is only command 1, and by gold the master beastman has command 2 and at diamond it is command 3. The cost should go up to at least 15, if not 20. I would prefer 20 as that would prevent the OL from buying it with thier initial 15 points. So overall this is what taskmaster would look like:

(20) Taskmaster: Whenever you spawn a Master Beastman you may instead replace it with a Master Deep Elf for 2 extra threat in addition to the cost of the card. Master Deep Elves gain Command.

Lone assassin, I don't really see a problem with this. You could also have an alternate effect for 10 or 15 point cost have the lone assassin be available like traps are for the spider queen.

Teleport. I don't know how usefull this would be, like the others here, it would depend on the layout of her dungeon. If it is similiar to the Great wyrm, or Demon prince then it might be usefull. It would all depend on the layout. I would suggest using a lot of the pit counters in the setup of the dungeon. This would make teleport more powerfull than otherwise, without blocking line of sight.

Dark magic is probably to powerfull unless it looses the frost token. I am actually of two minds where the pierce comes in as traditionally such attacks do have pierce, and by switching the die from red to white the damage has gone down somewhat. I think that i would playtest it first to see which looks better overall. If the full pierce is to much, perhaps pierce 5 which will get through most of the armor without eliminating it totally on the heavier tanks.

Hope this gives you more ideas to play with.

Brian.

Thank you for all the suggestions. I can see some changes need to be made, but I don't want to make them too quickly. Some key points I have been thinking about when designing them:

- There are only 3 figures, 1 master and 2 normal. This will limit spawning and placement a lot. Although I think with Lone Assassin, I should change Task Masters into some form of Normal Deep Elf Spawn.

- The ranged attack option is feeling tricky, I was working with the Dark Elf theme, but sleep does seem a little nasty. Maybe something like a ranged attack using the blue die instead of the red, replace Pierce and Frost with spend 1 surge to inflict Daze on a hero. Stun doesn't feel right, Sleep will take the hero out of the fight and remove their armor. This way Daze can reduce their strength but without pierce will not always work as they have to at least breach armor and the Overlord will have to choose between Daze or gaining extra threat.

- I was trying to find a unique location to place her Keep that does not close off the heroes travel options too much. There are very few locations to choose from, so I will probably have to use the same locations as other Avatars. It looks like Keeps are at least 3 spaces from Tamalir, so I did miss that.

- I agree that the other Avatar's do not have more then one power card to choose from, but there are very limited ways to include many of the expansion monsters without including some form of extra spawn ability which is what I am trying to create.

- I expect some of these Avatars to be more powerful then the base ones and would see them used for more advanced players looking for a greater challenge.

I have 5 concepts in design right now:
> Witch Elf
> Dark Bishop
> Vampire Lord (Ferrox)
> Kobold King (Don't laugh you might be surprised)
> Wild Hunt (Hellhound)

Once again thanks for all your thoughts, it really helps to flesh out ideas with other people's perceptions.

There are only 3 figures, 1 master and 2 normal. This will limit spawning and placement a lot. Although I think with Lone Assassin, I should change Task Masters into some form of Normal Deep Elf Spawn.
- I had forgotten the limited number of dark elves in the game. Maybe make it substitute one beastman, blood ape, or ogre for 3 threat, 5 threat if substituting a master. This would give you more options on getting them in play, without drastically changing the the game. I would not give command to a non-master monster however.

This way Daze can reduce their strength but without pierce will not always work as they have to at least breach armor and the Overlord will have to choose between Daze or gaining extra threat.
- In RTL daze takes effect if 1 point of damage is inflictied before armor. So not having pierce will make no difference to the chance of the daze working.

The other avatars that you are working on look interesting.

Brian

I'm a minority of one on the idea of the sleep token being added to the Poisoned Darts attack. In fact I had added this very same effect to a Poisoned Darts trap field in a Rumor dungeon I designed. The idea was to make the dungeon difficult for the heroes, plain and simple. I think it's ok to include some high-end-of-the-spectrum difficulty challenges. The worst that can happen is the heroes will lose....and there seems to me near universal agreement that as the campaign progresses, it's too easy for the heroes to win. I would make the Poisoned Darts upgrade cost 20 XP, for balance. But I would leave it in, because I think it's a great idea. The only change maybe should be to give the sleep effect a built-in shelf life. (If the hero doesn't awake on a surge roll after the first turn, he "comes to" without a roll on the second turn.) That might add additional verbiage, but so what?

I agree that the Taskmaster upgrade is pretty powerful, but wildly applaud any idea that gets more Master Deep Elves involved in the game. I would dilute that somewhat, but don't have any specific suggestions....it appears others are answering the bell nicely on that issue anyway.

In general, I think it's ok to make things a little more challenging for the heroes than the conventional wisdom condones.

Wish I could edit my original post, oh well. Here is a revised version of the Witch Elf (I used Photobucket thanks for the tip, so much easier ):

Her Lieutenant and Dungeon Layout (Concept):

Her Avatar Upgrades:

This next Avatar is intended for advanced players looking for a challenge:

His Lieutenant:

His Avatar Upgrades:

Darkspell, thanks for posting these. I think they are extremely well done, just excellent! I know I will add these to "inventory". On one of your Dark Bishop avatar upgrade cards, you have "Witch Elf Only" (Aura of Protection). I think you meant "Dark Bishop Only".. I think that the way you altered "Taskmasters" was very appropriate. I was a bit disappointed to see the Sleep token removed from "Poisoned Darts", I thought that was a nice touch, but I understand. I am probably a minority of one on that question, so it's probably the "right" thing to do...

Cards look great. They definitely seem powerful, but in a good way. I like the ideas a lot. The Avatar's end game needs stepped up quite a bit, these are definitely a step in the right direction.

On the teleport card did you mean for the Witch elf to permanently loose shadowcloak, or only when she teleports. My reading of the card would be that she permanently looses the shadowcloak.

Brian

She loses Shadowcloak when she buys the Teleport power. If she were to keep it, she would be virtually invulnerable to the heroes as she could just stay as far away from them as possible while her Lightning Bolt would hit them easily. Without Shadowcloak ranged heroes have a chance to hit her, while melee heroes will have to move strategically to get a good hit on her. Of course her greatest vulnerability is getting pinned in a corner. I still think she will be beaten pretty easy by a prepared group of heroes. I may try a test battle with and without Shadowcloak to see which actually works better.

Darkspell said:

My first impression from when you originally posted was that she would loose the shadowcloak if she teleported, if she did a normal move then she would still have had the shadowcloak. That was what spured the initial question. Either way will work, it is just a question of how tough is she going to be to kill. Given how hard it is normally for the overlord to win the final battle, I might be tempted to leave her with shadowcloak most of the time, but have her loose it if she wants to do some big attack.

On a side note, how about having threat that the avatar gains convert to fatigue (about 3 or 4 threat = 1 fatigue) This would give the avatar a whole lot more that they could do, just like hero's. Either that or use the rules for Lt fights where 2 threat is effectivly 1 fatigue.

Brian

I am of the opinion that the Avatar's final battle should be treated as a Lietenant encounter with no standard reinforcement. You have some good points on the Witch Elves Shadowcloak, I guess we'll have to see which way would work better with a test. Any thought on the Dark Bishop, I like the way he worked out but I expect heroes will hate him. I also have one more Avatar for your review:

his Lieutenant:

and his Avatar Upgrades:

Hello !

How did you make such beautiful avatars ? Have you got an editor ?

without doing any analysis, the Vampire Lord is the coolest idea I've seen yet for an Avatar...

EXCELLENT work mate! You really invested some thinking in this and the results are great. I just love your ideas on the abilities like the Dark Bishop using the temple rating instead of the defense rating.

I'm really looking forward to use one of your Avatars in my RtL-Campaign. You rock!

An over-excited Nimrod

If you want to get more dark priests out in play how about something like this.

(20) Summon the Faithfull: For 2 threat the OL may replace a regular sorcerer with a regular dark priest in initial setup for an area. Master dark priests can pay 4 movement and 4 threat to summon a regular dark priest adjacent to them, IGNORING LOS rules for spawns.

The first part lets you put into play a whole lot more dark priests if you have the threat to start with, the second means that as long as a master is alive there is a chance you can bring more out. Substituting dark priests for sorcerers is not a big upgrade in ability, they are roughly comparable in toughness and damage output, the reason for paying the extra threat is that they generate threat faster.

I would probably replace either the dark healing, or infernal blessing if you wanted to use this.

For the Vampire lord, the upgrade Undead Resiliance, did you want the mist form triggered off of the unstopable, or the undying. I would think it more appropriate thematically for the undying to trigger the move.

Brian

Nice job!!!! How do you do those cards???

The Avatar upgrades are done in Word, the Lieutenants and Avatars are done with Photoshop.

I felt that Dark Priests showed up enough without additional spawning and they are very potent in the first place, so I opted for more versatility and to Cthulu-ize them with the Chaos Beast bursting from their remains.

Anyways I look forward to all of your perceptions and analysis as it is always hard to see how everything may impact the game from one point of view and you have brought up some great points on the Witch Elf.

Corbon said:

Ok, a very brief but pretty important concern.

Undying is exceptionally powerful for an Avatar fight, I think way too powerful (and random).
Perhaps the Mistform could be linked to the undying. When (if) the undying is activated the AVatar could 'return' in mist-form - perhaps with 0 armour, no unstoppable or ironskin but Ghost and Stealth instead? Just got to find a way to simplify it enough to put on a card...

Your Avatar gains Regeneration 5 and unstoppable.

In addition he may turn to mist. to do this, when the Avatar looses his last wound instead of dying, he recovers half his wounds, looses Unstoppable, has his armour redused to zero and gains Stealth and Ghost. If killed a second time he stays dead.

Corbon said: