I would love some feedback on these Fringe characters I made for Arkham Horror.

By Vinny Vito, in Fan Creations

I realize this may have been done already but I am a big fan of the show and I wanted to involve the characters from the show in the fight against the mythos threat.

Walter Bishop

https://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/625x849q90/802/6vi3.jpg

Astrid Farnsworth
https://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/242x378q90/822/cnh3.jpg

Olivia Dunham
https://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/454x639q90/199/7wu8.jpg

Peter Bishop
https://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/456x639q90/593/t4h7.jpg

Any amount of feedback is appreciated. The abilities are what I perceive the characters would have if they actually existed. I think I balanced it well but I am probably a little biased. So please take a look and give me a little advice.

Edited by Vinny Vito

Heh maybe a /bit/ biased, especially on Bishop who seems to be a mash of previous abilities. Now, I sadly can't say I know what would be better options in terms of the show since I have no experience with Fringe, however I CAN say that by and large Bishop is heckuva powerful character. He's got an Ally that covers his weaknesses, including his lowered Sanity and Stamina, essentially an auto-pass for most checks since he will never have less than a 3 in Lore so long as he has Astrid, AND he can keep Gates and monsters from appearing (which may not be good for him since he can spend monsters and thus would WANT them around).

I think my recommendation for him would be to refocus what you want of him in the end. For instance, I have a character that has essentially the same as No-Brainer ability that uses another stat. That's all she has for special abilities. Essentially, I've found that is all she NEEDS, since most times, a complete second check is more than enough to solve any problem.

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Now, about Olivia. Her secondary ability is, again, a great power. However, think about this: when Olivia leaves an Otherworld, she can, essentially, close and possibly seal an entire Gate in essentially what amounts to one round. That's all well and good in some respects because her stats are actually rather low--without any kind of boosts from items, she doesn't have enough Lore or Fight to make a decent check against R'lyeh, which has a (-3). But then she gets free clue tokens which means that, even if she doesn't seal a gate, she still has a very, very good chance of closing it. I, personally, have won more games by closing every gate than by sealing 6 locations, so that may be personal experience alone talking.

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Peter is--probably the one that needs the least amount of work. His abilities are simply too potent. I would say select one and stick with it. If you think of it, he can be anything you want him to be. You need higher Lore? While you're waiting to get through that Other World, flip through the deck of Skills and keep your sliders adjusting as you go. Suddenly, you've got 6 Lore the moment you emerge. And then, let's say you give him money to head over and buy a second skill. Suddenly, he is a veritable demi-god of Skill sliders--heaven forbid he someone gets a third! ^_^

I hope this helped!

Dr. Faust I very much enjoyed your reply and I am gonna tweak some things about the characters. You have helped more than you know. I wanted to ask, did you mean Peter needs the most amount of work? Because you said he needed the least amount of work. So from what you posted I took that I need to focus the characters more and stop making them to broad in their abilities?

Heh what I meant was, Peter needed the least amount of work to make him more balanced. You just need to pick one ability and keep that. Everything else about him is fine.

And I'm glad I could help! Frankly, I almost enjoy making new characters more than I like playing the game itself! 8D

Hi Vinny.

As a fan of Fringe I have to say good work and nice ideas. ;)
Unfortunately I have not much experience with balancing investigators and game mechanics...

So I can't give you a good advise.

But in my opinion maybe you could change Olivia Dunhams second ability to something like regaining Sanity because of the Cortexiphan.

For Peter you could maybe think about allowing him an exchange of one skill card after successfully exploring a gate (because he is used to travel between parallel worlds).

Maybe these changes would reduce the power of your skills.

But as I said. I have no experience ;)
Maybe Dr. Faust has an opinion to my ideas from above.

Thank you for the reply raptor and thanks for the ideas. I have since post this actually changed the characters for the better I think and I will re-post them on here to see what people think.

I know they really have no place in arkham horror but I am putting the characters from GTA 5 in Arkham Horror.

Walter Bishop

So, you gave him the Scientist's ability plus one of the Gravedigger's better abilities, gave him the ability to replace a skill check with a stat that for him is always set to 6 with no downsides or costs outside of the once per turn restriction, and an ally that makes his detriment (4/4 sanity stamina) completely irrelevant?

Call me crazy, but that sounds awfully inbalanced.

I haven't watched the show before, but I feel like this guy needs more focus, and I don't mean the stat. What do you expect this guy to be doing in any given game? What does he specialize in? Why is he good at X, and why is he bad at Y? Some of these questions need to be asked first since right now, I'm not really sure what this character is all about.

Also, he's way too riskless. Assuming you aren't fighting monsters, you will probably only be making about 1 skill check a turn, and with his setup he has a guaranteed 6 stat on that skill check, and if he would lose any amount of stamina or sanity he only loses 1 instead. That's way too much safety. Tone down the effect on the ally, and give his second ability a cost.

Olivia Dunham

She's completely broken. Her stat lines add up to 17, which is 1 higher than normal assuming she's a 1 focus character, but on top of that she's also a 3 focus character? For no cost or drawback this is completely broken.

She also starts with a solid weapon and $10, which is unusually high for most characters, and her abilities are ridiculous too. You gave her the good half of the Fed's ability, and also gave her the ability to complete Gate Runs in half the time for a relatively low cost. That seems like an awful lot of free advantage. This character, in my opinion, needs to be toned WAY down, she's currently offering the power of two full investigators put together.

Peter Bishop

His kit doesn't make any sense. You gave him the Handyman's unique trait, but also gave him 3 focus? You also gave him the Actress' ability to swap skills out, which feels a little random? Once again you started him off with higher than average stats, which is normally balanced with 1 focus, but left him at 3 focus on top of that with no drawback and as mentioned earlier made it completely irrelevant.

I'm so confused with this one. His stuff is just all over the place and none of it makes sense together.

Alright, here's my advice to you:

1) Start from scratch with all of these investigators, and try to flesh out their identity a bit better. Find attributes and qualities that you think are unique to them and build on those ideas.

Here's an example. Peter strikes me as a character with incredible adaptability to his environment, almost unnaturally so. I can't say if that's actually true, but that idea is somewhat enforced by the abilities you chose to copy. It might be worthwhile trying to craft an investigator that changes in style and play with the state of the game, possibly changing with various Environment Mythos card types, or adjusting to different levels on the terror or doom track. Just ideas to play with.

2) Please use Strange Eons, and when using it don't use custom write-ups on stats and items. The values and sliders there are designed around balance. The average for investigators is to have every "column" of stats add up to 15 assuming the character has 2 focus, having more or fewer stats adjusts the focus in the opposite direction by that many points - 15 points, 2 focus / 14 points, 3 focus / 16 points, 1 focus. If you want to give stat points without the focus penalty, it costs $8 worth of starting funds to compensate. Your investigators are all inbalanced because these limitations and rules have been ignored on at least 2 of them.

3) Don't copy abilities from standard investigators. I see people do this a lot, and I don't think it's a good idea. The whole point of custom content is to push the boundary a bit, try something that the game hasn't tried yet. It can be tricky to come up with new and exciting abilities, but it makes your investigators and Ancient Ones much more interesting. This goes back to the first point a bit, search for the identity of these characters so that you can create abilities that reinforce them.

Anyways, sorry for being harsh, but everything I say is for the intent of improving your designs. Good Luck.

Edited by Shining Aquas