A whole mess of custom heroes.

[pockets]

My friends and I have inevitably taken to breaking out LNOE every time we meet up these days and we've been having a ball. a common complaint among my player group, however, is that there are too many student heroes in comparison to the rest of the cast, especially when cards that affect non-student hero types come into play. With that in mind, my friends have tasked me with creating heroes to round out the cast based on the four other hero types in the base game (Holy, Strange, Law Enforcement, and Medical.)

Keeping in mind that we don't have access to any of the expansions at this time (and that I'm mostly unfamiliar with the characters within, except for the diner cook who i understand is supposed to be some kind of unstoppable behemoth) I've whipped up 12 heroes - 3 of each non-student hero type to match the 4 students, minus 1 holy - and another student, for the hell of it. In the interest of keeping the game fair toward the zombie players, I've tried to keep the characters as balanced as possible, while still being interesting and appealing to my players (with varying levels of situational usefulness, of course.)

I'd love some input and advice to further balance these characters, and if any of these heroes tickle your fancy, please feel free to use them! Thanks for your time.

Holy Heroes
Miss Agnes - The Ornery Old Church Organ player.
Sister Charity - The Nun with a Dark Past.

Law Enforcement Heroes
Officer Holmes - The Unlucky Highway Patrol Officer
Stanley - The Old, Gruff Security Guard
Charlie - The Businesslike Private Investigator

Medical Heroes
June - The Shy Med Intern
Rusty - The Lazy Emergency Medical Technician
Dr. Tanner - The Pathologist with a love for Blood

Strange Heroes
Lacey - The tough-as-nails Biker Chick
Veronica - The seductive Con Artist
Sergeant Kirkpatrick - The Wheelchair-bound Veteran

Student Hero
Tiffany - The frightened Cheerleader.

[supervike]

That's an impressive addition!

Really like the looks of them....I'll certainly give them a go in upcoming games.

[Sarku]

Awesome heroes pockets...

If you get the chance... add them to our downloads area. They'd make welcome additions!

[pockets]

Supervike - Thank you! If you end up using any of the heroes in your games, I'd really love to hear how they work out for you.

Sarku - Absolutely will do. I'll get them zipped up in a single file for easy access.

My group got some playtesting done for a few of the heroes last night. We played two games, and Lacey, Kirkpatrick, Charity, Tiffany, Veronica, and Holmes all got their first run out of the gate. My early impressions are as follows:

Lacey is a solid melee powerhouse and very effective at taking out the horde. Our zombie players hated her so much that by the time she was eventually killed in game 1, she had three negative Remains In Play cards strapped her. Kirkpatrick, conversely, is a glass cannon: extremely powerful at range, but easily beaten by zombies close up. His player seemed to do well enough with him and did his best to keep him protected or holed up in a safe building for most of the game.

Charity seemed useful enough in theory, but her player rolled poorly for most of the game and never utilized her S.O.S. ability through the game she was in, hopefully not for fault of bad design. Similarly, Tiffany's player never used her Running in Fear
ability either and died early in her game, revived as a Zombie Hero, and was replaced by Becky. Both of these two weren't very well received by their players after the game. I feel confident in their design enough to chalk this up to playstyle incompatibility, but I'm still going to need to give them both some more testing.
Holmes's Call for Backup ability, when rolled correctly, was also very useful - perhaps unfairly so. I am considering revising this skill to allow Holmes to move to a square adjacent to a hero instead.
Veronica was undoubtedly the most well-received Hero of the night. My players really responded well to a "buff/support class" character. One of my players requested that I make a male variation of Veronica in order to buff female characters as well, as she prefers to play female characters, natch. If I do, I'll post him to the thread here.

I'll update soon with further playtesting/heroes/shooting the shit. Thanks for your time! :]

[Emp]

Nice looking heroes.
Great job of thinking about the many different types of characters.

[deadbody]

nice work would be cool if you made counters for them

[Damienxxx]

Nice work. Printed them. Will add on our next game.

[samuraitrev]

Impressive work!! I bet with enough serching on miniature sites you could also find models to represent your characters.
You have my vote I would use these characters.
My only concern is the characters who start with the keys; in certain scenarios (Escape in the Truck) where the keys are scenario search items this starting ability would seriously offset the game balance.

Would be great to see more of your characters!

[Onemangang]

Looking real good Pockets. Could you tell me how you made the painted look at the photo's?

[kyletos88]

They are sick. What did you use for the template to make it. How did you get the pictures to look like that.