5 Custom Characters, looking for comments.

[Phantaskippy]

These are characters I made for my gaming group. I tried to balance them yet make them fun and in a tongue-in-cheek way a good portrayal of their personality.

Let me know if you like the feel of the characters, and if the balance is too far off.

First up an ex-military med tech who shocks people for a living. This is my favorite:

My older sister. This fits her personality very well. She isn't balanced, in real life or the game. Tried to offset the ridiculousness.

The Gamemaster, who likes to make lists and organize for situations that will likely never occur.

My wife, who has a MA in History and works for the IRS helping tax-payers figure out the tax code. The picture is not her, as it is not wise for IRS employees to have their names and faces on the internet.

for a little girl who desperately wants to play the game, but is too small. With Small and Child I tried to give abilities that would be farther on the scale than lightweight and youth. Helper makes up for the deficiencies.


Let me know what you think. Some of the rules aren't the clearest, but I had to fit the descriptions into the space allowed.

[mqstout]

Keywords: Replace "Catholic" with "Holy". Remove "Domestic". (Unless it was intentional NOT to have holy on her for Faith.)

* Meghan -- seems to be the strongest if you fix the keyword above. I guess you could remove the keywords altogether. If she gets the rosary and faith, though...
* Brett -- did you playtest the 1d2? Did you mean for him to be able to heal himself too? Looks fine, overall, depending on how playtesting comes out.
* Laura -- seems balanced, but I don't understand "does this hurt" (thematically)
* Geoff -- looks fine
* Child -- no no no no no no! on the "helper" ability.

[Phantaskippy]

(09-10-2012 03:22 PM)mqstout Wrote:  Keywords: Replace "Catholic" with "Holy". Remove "Domestic". (Unless it was intentional NOT to have holy on her for Faith.)

* Meghan -- seems to be the strongest if you fix the keyword above. I guess you could remove the keywords altogether. If she gets the rosary and faith, though...
* Brett -- did you playtest the 1d2? Did you mean for him to be able to heal himself too? Looks fine, overall, depending on how playtesting comes out.
* Laura -- seems balanced, but I don't understand "does this hurt" (thematically)
* Geoff -- looks fine
* Child -- no no no no no no! on the "helper" ability.

Meghan - Making faith remain in play on her made her way too powerful. the ability as is makes faith better than heroic resolve and hero's rage, if it remained in play it would be ridiculous, I gave her the Catholic tag because it helps explain why she gets to flip out under faith, but without making it overpowered. She is really strong when the library and Church are both in play, which really suits my wife.

Laura - My sister is just mean. When losing fights she always found a way to simply hurt you, this has gotten worse as her medical knowledge increased. I played around with her still losing but having a chance to wound a zombie, but it wasn't very good. I made it strong to offset the permanent overconfidence.

Brett - the playtesting so far has him being very hard to kill when he can use pickups, but he burns items fast. The 4 hits makes him less reliant on the ability to survive, while the 1d2 healing balances the ability vs. others like Nikki's discard to heal or cancel a zombie card ability. Fully heal or straight 2 heal was too powerful, and I like the feel of the randomness with the expiramental idea.

Cecily - Why? I know it is powerful, but I think it balances out with the 2 move action cost and her other negatives.

[mqstout]

Cecily: Balanced, it might be. But it's one of those things that, I feel, shouldn't be done. It goes too much against the grain of the game. To paraphrase Mark Rosewater (lead design of Magic the Gathering): "Just because it can be done doesn't mean we should. There has to be a really good reason and it has to play well and feel good to violate some of the deeper parts of the game with new mechanics."

Good to know about Brett. Laura's might just need a tweaking of the ability name to "get" it. On Meghan, I see you did purposefully not have Holy on her. Maybe call the ability Catholic instead of making it a keyword? I see keywords as *potentially* having mechanical meaning (like 'holy', 'strange' and 'student' do).

[Phantaskippy]

(09-10-2012 04:01 PM)mqstout Wrote:  On Meghan, I see you did purposefully not have Holy on her. Maybe call the ability Catholic instead of making it a keyword? I see keywords as *potentially* having mechanical meaning (like 'holy', 'strange' and 'student' do).

I understand your thoughts there. I like the additional keywords, there are plenty that don't have any mechanic tied to them yet, like science and medical. I like the idea of adding in mechanics later that use these.

[Orguss]

Cecily is incredibly too strong. Also you say movement of 2 for Cecily, am I not reading it correctly? Doesn't say anything about she moves slower. Now, perhaps if she did move slower, say a d3 for movement instead...

However, the most absolutely, ridiculously over powered without a doubt ability? DOES THIS HURT. If you have the Sledge Hammer and this? You will never lose. Always win. Absolutely always.

Quote:COMBAT BONUS:

The Hero may only roll a single Fight Dice (additional Fight Dice may NOT be added). If a 4, 5, or 6 is rolled, the Zombie is Instantly Killed.

I either roll a 4-6 and instantly kill, or I roll 1-3 and cancel the fight AND wound him. Now granted, it's situational... but I honestly can not see you EVER having to worry from then on.



You said Gamesmaster so I assume the house husband is a gamer/D&D/board game person. Then I don't get Pyro. It's not necessarily a bad ability, but the flavor doesn't come off.

If you don't want her to be holy, don't put catholic. Very few heroes have more than 1 classification. I understand Government as a subtype, because from there it opens up at least 2 or 3 that relate to them, but no need to add catholic. I agree with mtgstout ;p Holy or nothing imo.

Other than that, I do like them. I just don't think you understand how powerful some of those abilities are. I would hate to be the zombie player.

[faustol]

Great characters !!!

[alderdust]

What if Cecily starting location is with an adult and can only move in a space adjacent to a hero and never further away due to "holding her hand" to help balance her out.