I see your point I had thought the Sorcerer King had undying, but checking revealed that he does not get it. With the mist form I am going for an escape whenever he is trapped by an ability, but I don't want it to trigger when a hero first moves adjacent to him otherwise he will be invulnerable to some heroes. I think a possible revision could be (Although I'm still not sure of the wording yet):

Undead Resilience: Your Avatar gains the Regeneration 5 and Unstoppable abilities. Additionally if a hero triggers your Avatar's Unstoppable ability, your Avatar interupts the end of the heroes turn and becomes a mist and may immediately move a number of spaces equal to his speed.

From the description, what you want is:

One with the Mists: Your Avatar gains the Regeneration 5 and Unstoppable abilities. In adition he may spend five threat at any time in order to gain Stealth and Fly instead of Unstoppable, until the start of the Overlord's next turn.

This one was more challenging to put together. I bring you The Kobold King:

His Lieutenant:

His Upgrades:

The Kobold King's throne room will be full of pits and rubble and has the following special feature:
Each turn roll 1 red die and for each wound rolled spawn one Normal Kobold in any pit ignoring line of sight; for each surge rolled spawn one Master Kobold in any pit ignoring line of sight; and on a miss result the Kobold King hides in the pits, remove the Kobold King from the board. The Kobold King is placed in any pit ignoring line of sight on the next turn a miss result is not rolled. Any hero that falls or enters a pit is immediately subject to an attack from an unseen Normal Kobold.

I'm not overly sure of the utility of "Flying Kobolds", but the rest looks nice.

Actually, with some of the ideas there, I'm sure you've been rummaging through my notebooks at night

Darkspell, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but in the repost of the Dark Elf Witch, her Avatar attributes are listed as the Dark Bishops.

bneumann said:

Ah yes, the problem w this is the lack of Deep Elves in the set. Only 1 red and 2 white, there would be constant shortages. War Party is impossible, as there are not 2 reds available. Many dungeons then have minion options for 3 regular beastmen, also impossible. There just arent enough figures. Maybe if the set came with 2/6 instead of 1/3. You'd end up subbing another figure for them all the time.

I actually like your dark bishop a lot better... cuz there are ample DP's to go around, and the DP is many OL's favorite friend.

-mike

Wow tho, I love the Kobold King and Vampire Lord. I particularly like the flying Kobolds! What used to never be able to reach the heros suddenly they gain lots of movement. Nice abilities! I will have to print these out and discuss them here...

Kobolds with 5 movement (thereby making swarm more useful) will get lots more surges, which can turn into +1 pierce each... that's some nice combinations you can accomplish there.

Then the ability to spawn a Kobold for free with every trap makes traps (and kobolds) way more useful. I want to play him!

I am interested to see the keeps you come up with, cuz those would be crucial.

Nice work,

-mike

A question on the Flying Kobolds (it needs a better name, maybe Dive Bombers, or something to depict a pack of Kobolds hanging off a Razorwing)...

Can any number of Kobolds fly on the same Razorwing? Do they all drop off when the Razorwing ends its turn, or can they drop off along the way? Thematically it would make more sense that they all grab on, then they can drop off in any space the RW flies thru. Then add some bit like if the RW attacks while Kobolds are holding on, it gets a -1 damage per Kobold. Therefore you have to fly in, drop off your Kobolds as you go, once they're off, you make your attack, then fly off or land.

The implications are huge... normally w Kobolds, the first one gets no swarm benefit, the 2nd one gets +1 die, the third gets +2, etc as they get in position... but w the RW drop, he could drop them all around a hero for the first one to start right off w the bonuses.

If I was playing this guy, I would take Frenzy as my starting ability, then the Flying one as soon as I got 5 CT.

Then I tallied up, and 14 of the 44 dungeons have Kobolds as optional minions. That's not bad, it's about 32% that would have Kobolds with 5 movement, and around 2 pierce. Plus every trap card you can drop 2 more (or 1 master) for a single threat, that is great. As soon as you get Silver Humanoids, that ability is going to be killer.

Does it seem balanced? I think it's on the strong side. Before they were slow and impotent, and could rarely use their special because of the lack of speed. Now they are fast, spawned all the time w/o regard for the spawn eyes, completely mobile as they can cross a whole map on a Razorwing, and they are very potent as any surge grants pierce, plus they'll often roll 5 black dice by some good drops and use of Swarm.

-mike

poobaloo said:

Yup, I missed the number of deep elves in the set. For some reason I was thinking there were 5 regular, and 2 masters. Sorry about that

Brian

poobaloo said:

Good questions, looks like it needs a bit of rewording, but thats why I'm posting them. I was inteding for Flying Kobolds to allow one Kobold on a Razorwing and can be dropped off at any point up to the end of the Razorwing's move (Can be useful to save a Master Kobold from the clutches of those pesky heroes). Additionally all of the Avatars I have created are intended to be more challenging for advanced players and it was a bit challenging to find a way to make Kobolds fearsome. Yes, I did intend on making them extremely annoying by showing up constantly everywhere on the map, should drive the heroes crazy. I can't wait to hear the first report of heroes strategy sounding like this; "No forget the Demon, we've got to get ride of those <insert explative of choice> Kobolds!"

My last concept is complete. Have a look and let me know your thoughts on any and all of these Avatar's, I'll make some revisions and post new revised versions of all of them. The only job left is their Keeps, which will take a lot of work, I was hoping that Mike Z's dungeon editor would be up as it worked great. Guess I'll have to come up with another way.

Finally the Wildhunt:

His Lieutenant, I mean him as a ... well have a look and you'll see:

and his Upgrades:

The Wildhunts Keep, will feature an dungeon transition into an outdoor map for the final fight.

So once again I implore you to share your thoughts and I'll consider suggestions and post revised versions for you all to try out in your games. I also would like to hear if anyone does try them to see how they worked for you.

I really like the look of this guy. A couple of thoughts though.

1. The OL starting every encounter is killer. Every encounter being box canyon is a bit strong, especially when there will be lots of 0 armor sleeping heroes. If you really wanted him to be an enounter powerhouse, something like letting him use his monster treachery in all encounters would keep him nasty, but within limits.

2. The hunter is a really cool concept, but has some rules holes. Can he appear in lieutenant encounters? What happens when one of them flees, but the other is still on the board? If he flees/dies, does the encounter end with the heroes not getting XP for the normal encounter leader?

3. I think the upgrade cards are very well balanced. Unerring accuracy is slightly weak, but the avatar is starting out with 90 HP, so he doesn't need very strong upgrade cards.

4. Have you considered having his keep be outdoors? It would go really well with the flavor of him. You might want to make Unerring accuracy let him ignore shadowcloak though if you do.

1. The combination of the Avatar power and including the Lt is very strong. You might consider having the ambush chance not be rerolled unless the Lt is present. This still makes normal encounters much nastier with the OL having a bit more choice of location and encounter. There will be very few benificial encounters without risk to the hero's, and even normal encounters that the hero's wouldn't have a problem with become more dificult with the upgraded hellhounds available. Especially when you note that hellhounds are one of the cheaper monsters to reinforce with (3 threat). This is even more powerfull when you realize that 8 of the 30 encounters do not have minions normally. There are also 8 encounters that are non-combat. By letting the OL pick between two encounters the chance of a non-combat encounter just dropped from about 26% to 7% roughly.

2. As far as having the Lt join an encounter, I would recommend that he not be allowed to join another Lt. For when he joins a regular encounter the hero's get a double reward, just like in dungeons with more than one leader. The monsters do not flee untill both leaders are dead or fled however. This will make up in part for how much more dangerous the encounters just got. You might also consider allowing the automatic inclusion of the Lt when the Avatar upgrade "Big Trouble" is played. Alternately you could make big trouble allow a choice of 5 locations and encounters. Without some benifit beyond the normal the upgrade is pretty much useless. Maybe up the cost on "The Pack" upgrade to 25 and use one of these ideas. This way it reduces the chance that the "Big Trouble" upgrade will be played early when it is really tough on the hero's, but make it still be effective once the hero's are up to speed.

Overall a really nice concept, I hope to have a chance to play test it sometime.

Brian

Those are some great points, but before I consider some changes, I'd like to play the Devils Advocate (I'm good at that ).

This Avatar has little to no influence on Dungeons which will allow the heroes a lot of room to improve and this is where they have the greatest opportunity to grow. They should however cringe every time and encounter roll is successful. Also there is only a chance the Lieutenant will join any encounter and The Hunter also cannot siege cities or collect artifacts.

Having two Lieutenants in an encounter is a bit of a grey area, my first thought is to let it happen and see if it really tilts the game balance too far, after all the Wildhunt can only have 3 active Lieutenants on the overland board.

Just like normal dungeons all Leaders would have to be defeated, but the remaining Leader would be limited to his normal reinforcements and abilities.

I am also strongly considering removing the reroll on the ambush die. One other thought is to change it so he draws either an extra Encounter Card or Location Card, instead of both. This would also minimize the impact on Big Trouble (which I hadn't considered).

His Keep is outdoors, ToI included a transition tile from dungeon to outdoors that I am planning on using. I agree with your suggestion on ignoring Shadowcloak, that would be necessary, I was going to have his Keep special that he ignores trees when making attacks. But this could be added to his Unerring Accuracy.

Please feel free to debate this as I prefer to challenge ideas until the best option presents itself, rather then quick changes that tend to go back and forth. Thank you once again your feedback is really appreciated.

1.) Instead of removing the reroll on the ambush dice, how about upping the chance of an ambush by one catagory. This makes ambushes more likely, but not guaranteed.

2.) I actually like the mechanism for allowing choice of encounter and location. I would rather not change that. I would however give some bonus to Big Trouble. The easiest is that the Hunter Lt will appear if the OL wants it to. It does fit thematically with him showing up with supprise.

3.) You might also consider having a modified round when the Hunter appears. Instead of having an automatic OL goes first in every encounter, make it whenever the hunter appears the hero's lose thier first turn. They are not asleep so they still have thier armor, but the Lt will have a major impact on any encounter just by giving the ol the first action. Of course if you get an ambush this doesn't matter, but it will matter a lot for some encounters. Especially something like Box Canyon with a Master Demon, plus the ability to reinforce when normally this would be impossible.

4.) As far as Unnerring accuracy, I would recommend that you leave the ignore shadowcloak as part of the keep specials. This way there is no chance that the Avatar does not have it when the party reaches his keep (ie The Twins rumor).

Brian

Great !

Continue !

For the Deep Elf avatar how about an upgrade ability called Shadow Magic: pay 6 threat to give any creature the Shadowcloak ability until the beginning of the overlords next turn. Maybe a cost of 5 threat to purchase.

Kudos to you on all of the hard work that you obviously put into these Avatars.

I have a couple of suggestions/opinions that may or may not be of any intelligible benefit.

Witch Elf

I like the teleport and I think that thematically, an elf should be able to flit about and attack while concealed. What if it was more like: Teleport requires 2 or 3 movement and can only be used once per turn.

As for the lightning bolt attack, shadowcloak is lost until start of next tturn when making your this attack. It could also add additional effect tokens like burn or bleed.

I think that once per dungeon (not dungeon level) you should be able to spawn a Deep elf for 3 threat or a Master Deep Elf for 1 XP. It could result from a "Bounty Hunter" or "Headhunter Contract" Avatar upgrade. Theme: Deep Elves are Assassins. They want to be paid. The best assassins require a significantly higher price, but if used correctly, can be worth far more than their pay.

Dark Bishop

The Chaos beast should only occur if a master is killed. This would thematically represent the "Blessings" to the most devout.

I think that Dark Healing should heal the Avatar 1 per surge rolled. This would still insure that there is a benefit to the Avatar as a dark priest. They are threat machines, but threat has no use in the final battle.

I think that the Monster treachery should be switched with the Trap treachery. Priests love followers...

Vampire Lord

What a concept! I love the Blood Ritual Avatar ability.

I would suggest that while Night Haunts gives Fly and Shadowcloak, it does NOT give soar in encounters.

It's Alive seems a little underpowered for 20 XP. Even with one per deck, it won't come up that often. Golems are OK for slowing a party down, but the concept for a "Frankenstein's Monster" type creature seems a bit out of place. Maybe better placed with the Dark Bishop or even an all new avatar. I would suggest a Razorwing Leech or Undying ability as a replacement.

I like the idea that Undead Resilience can be used at will. What if by spending all movement points (Can't remember how many a diamond ferrox has) you can lose the Unstoppable and gains ghost, stealth and regen 10 for a turn as well as being immune to all non-magic attacks? The ability could end at the end of the following turn.

If the above "mist" ability is used, Vampiric charm could not be used while in mist form.

Kobold King

I like the combination of Razorwings and Kobolds. Flying Kobolds would, of course, have to be clarified. What if the landing kobold must immediately be activated? That would prevent the Kobold paratroopers from each benefiting from a huge swarm bonus.

Could another skill be replaced to allow this Avatar to have a higher Treachery limit? 4/3/5 would make it pretty interesting. LT encounters could be a pain, but it could be nerfed a bit by limiting the max hand size for this avatar to 6. (Kobolds are notoriously sly as well as stupid)

Zeb's Artifact ability seems like it would be an absolute waste of time for the OL. What if the Artifact had a movement of 1 and could move itself back to the lair (Think Lord of the Rings. The One Ring had a will of its own.)

Frenzy should only be +1 movement. Along with the Razorwing ability, they already have one heck of a range.

The idea that even the throne room of the avatar is literally swarming with kobolds is neat. It could make for an extremely interesting Avatar battle. It shows that alone, the Kobold King may be weak, but he still has tricks (trap treachery) and his horde at his disposal.

Wildhunt

Because the avatar's playstyle is so radically different from any other avatar, I don't know if it is over or under powered. The one Mechanic that seems to be broken is a TPK in an encounter. Do the heros return to Tamalir? If so, it could conceivably shut down the hero party before they can even move to another town. If the party does stay in the same location after a TPK involving the LT, it may be balanced.

The apparent lack of other strengths in a dungeon setting may not be enough to balance out the other Avatar skills if the heors cannot get to more than a couple of dungeons. I would suggest nerfing the LT a bit to account for this fact.

All in all, this is an amazing job and I would love to get some input from the game design team.

Feraldis said:

I thought that for Lt. encounters your hand size was limited only to the amount of treachery you had available. I thought that while you lose cards as you play/discard them, that you were not restricted to 8 (or 10 in case of Demon Prince with optional +1 for eldtich lore). Can anyone weigh in on this? This would seem very limiting, especially if you were planning to get the two for one "normal" cards of a certain type.

The way I understand the rules, you are not limited to a hand size in encounters. Since cards are one shots and you don't get to replenish your hand in any way, there seems to be less of a need to limit the number of cards you can have any one time.

That being said, I notoriously miss-interpret rules, so other input would be cool.

Right. Part of the restriction of having that much treachery would be a limit on the hand size. The Kobold King would be much more effective in a dungeon setting than in overworld encounters. The current rules may not restrict hand size, but there is nothing saying that an avatar ability cannot alter rules. (ex. The Beastlord can flip his spawn marker for 12 threat, not the normal 15).

Feraldis said:

So are you saying limit hand size in dungeons only and not in Lt. encounters? Perhaps that was what I misunderstood. Perhaps the extra treachery limits are an upgrade you purchase that also comes with the disadvantage of reducing max hand size by 2? This way eldritch lore could still be purchased to offset that somewhat.

Or perhaps the special of the kobold king is one extra treachery is available in each category, but for each treachery category that goes over his normal listed maximum, his hand size is reduced by 1? Something like that could be interesting I guess. Still, it we be tough to not just see someone going for a whole bunch of treachery and then going for the win with lts and 20-odd cards in their hand for each Lt. encounter.

My suggestions are solely for the purpose of sparking discussion. I would think that the Kobold King would not have his hand limited in dungeons. Only in outdoor encounters. This would prevent the treachery/LT rush and also add more of a thematic sense that when you are in the dungeons, you really are on the Kobold King's turf. It would be more difficult for the KK to win in the game based on the overworld board. The offset to that would be the higher average CT that the OL would gain in dungeons.

I guess I look at the KK as the opposite of the Wildhunt, who obviously depends more heavily on the encounters.

Wow that's a lot of feedback.

"For the Deep Elf avatar how about an upgrade ability called Shadow Magic: pay 6 threat to give any creature the Shadowcloak ability until the beginning of the overlords next turn. Maybe a cost of 5 threat to purchase."
Nevron, I'm not sure everything having the option to gain Shadowcloak would go over very well; this would primarily be used to enhance leaders who often can be potent without such an advantage. This could also be used to make Soaring monsters unhittable, depending on how you interpret the rules.

Thanks for all the comments Feraldis; it really looks like you put some thought into it.

Witch Elf:
Some good thoughts on Teleport and her Lightning Bolt attacks, I'll need to think about those. I included Lone Assassin to cover adding extra Deep Elves which I think accomplishes the same effect.

Dark Bishop:
I see your point on the Chaos Beasts, but I think for play testing I would like to see them on all Dark Priests due to the rarity of rolling a blank may make the effect never occur. As for threat in the final battle, my opinion is to play it very similar to a Lieutenant battle, meaning the Overlord may spend threat to add to the Avatar's movement and attacks. As for the treachery, that may be appropriate, I was thinking along the lines of temples and pyramids having traps installed in them.

Vampire Lord:
Hmm, razorwing & leech, why didn't I think of that. This Avatar is one I feel needs the most thought, I do want to include the Golem a bit more into RTL and the treachery cost is too high for what you gain in a golem (I know there have been many discussions on this). I will definitely take your suggestions into consideration and good point not allowing Charm during mist form. I may rework mist form into having a cost and making him gain ghost and or stealth until his next action, I'm not totally decided yet.

Kobold King:
I'm more of the opinion to allow the Kobold paratroopers, if the Overlord can manage to gather that many Razorwings and Kobolds to make such an attack, all the power to him. It is also promoting the use of less used spawn cards. I was thinking that Zeb's power is very useful and would be reason enough to have another Lieutenant pick up his artifact and return it to the Keep. As for your other suggestions they sound pretty good, I'll look into them.

Wildhunt:
This one is an attempt at using an entirely new mechanic, but you may be right I hadn’t considered trapping the heroes.

I am still working on the Overlord Keeps, that is not a small task. I will post them as I complete them, but in the mean time feel free to leave more comments.

One more ?