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So the boyfriend and I just discovered this game in the past month thanks to some friends, and had to pick up our own copy (along with the expansion and the Hero pack). While there is certainly no shortage of heroes, it would be impossible for us not to make our own. So far he has designed a merchant, an undertaker, a son for the doctor, and a few more.

The two characters I am interested in however are proving somewhat harder for me to flesh out.

The easier, and probably more interesting one, is a Thief. Cunning is going to be a major focus for the character, with less of a focus on Spirit and Honor. The two abilities I've come up with (and there is no reason there needs to be a third) are:

The first is the ability to forgo one attack round while in combat to instead attempt to steal from the enemy. This does count as an attack for the purposes of escaping on the following round. And since the enemy does get to attack him still, he might wish to do just that.

I assume a cunning test would be applicable to see if the theft occurs, but I can't quite figure out what a good reward would be. My first thought was an item of some sort, but there are not enough generic items to make that interesting, and it would be way overpowered to let him take an item from any of the decks (or stacks) with this. Plus, why would a succubus be carrying a musket (and shouldn't she be using it if she did have it?) .

So that leads to investigation tokens, which do make more sense when seen as currency as opposed to 'clues'. This would NOT decrease the number of tokens received for defeating the monster normally. This is just an added bonus for the Thief. The only problem I have with that, is that in most of the games I've played, investigation tokens are not hard to come by. In fact, the last time we played, we just stopped putting tokens on the board since we no longer needed them.

A possible solution to the investigation token is coming up with a variant use for them (spend 5 tokens for one additional die for a test, or something similar).

The other ability I came up with and am somewhat fond of, is being able to steal from the town items themselves. Now I've gone back and forth on how to properly balance this, and have a few ideas. One is to make it that the max you can possibly succeed at stealing is your total Cunning stat (with modifiers). I think this is similar then to an ability the Blacksmith's Wife ally gives you. Originally I assumed no role was needed to succeed (since there was a more dire consequence for doing this), but a Cunning test might not be uncalled for, with a failure resulting in your losing a bunch of investigation.

The consequence of this action would be that you were now WANTED within town limits. This would only encompass the center spots, though it COULD extend to the Manor. This could be the same ability as the Scarlet Shadow, though with the added punishment of losing the pilfered item in the process.

I've gone back and forth on the ability since first dreaming this character up, but I've yet to settle on it's particulars. Originally, you could take any item you wanted from the Blacksmith, but in doing so you were now robbed of a place to train, to heal, or to buy more items. This was because I'd imagined the punishment for stealing to be much more severe. Either you simply could not end your turn in the town limits, or perhaps if you did you were immediately sent to the nearest road tile (even if it was from the direction you came from), and lost some of your items/investigation in the process. So you could go and grab the padded jacket on turn one, but now your Cunning can only ever get as high as you can find items to increase it by. But if you waited until shortly before the Showdown, the best items might already have been purchased (especially dangerous in that theoretical Competitive game I've never tried). But by using the same ability as the SS has, you could at least potentially escape the constabularies notice. I think if I was going to use that second WANTED description, I'd definitely want to limit what you can steal by your current Cunning. And this would technically allow you to steal again, so long as you passed the Cunning test to avoid notice.

As an added feature, this could also be applied to the Monastery, but that would cut off the Monastery AND the Inn, and now you have nowhere to heal. This would definitely mean you'd want to have plenty of investigation to heal yourself.

I've also considered a more passive ability for those who don't want to live dangerously. The most thematic and logical I can think of is a bonus to the number of items you can hold at a time. Either one additional item from both the Manor and Abandoned Keep (being the more logical targets of a civilized thief) and also including the Inn should you be using the Echo Board map, or perhaps just a blanket one extra item from one location (of the Thief's choice). This would be very useful, and is certainly easier to balance than the previous two abilities, but I do worry he is getting a bit bogged down, or perhaps even a bit too overpowered. It is a shame he is (in theory) going to be so reliant on a stat (Cunning), or the balancing could come from very poor stats elsewhere.

As it is, I could easily see him being Honor 1, Spirit 1, Cunning 4 (or maybe 3 since his abilities could be very powerful), Combat 2 (possibly 1, but I worry at 1 Combat the Tools of Science would be necessary as opposed to just very useful) and then maybe Wounds 2. I definitely like the idea of Wounds being very low, both to make the +Wound items more attractive, and to make attempting to steal from a monster more appealing.

Well, I think that is Character Idea #1. If any of you actually slogged through that, well done, and thanks for your time. If any of you actually have some suggestions or ideas, all the better. This took far longer than I expected, so I might not add my other concept until tomorrow at the soonest.

Sorry my first post was such a beast, but I get very loquacious when given a soap box.
-KEvin

Welcome to TZG-always great to see an addition to Team AToE(Gotta keep the Z-Heads in check)

Cool ideas,keep us posted on how you work the Thief out it has potential.

OD

Report 1: The Thief

So I just went through about six rounds of solo play while test driving the Thief as currently described above. I played him with a team also including The Scarlet Shadow and the Captain Hawkins, both of which are pretty tough. Despite going easy on myself (I did play an Advanced game) by not including The Cooperative Mystery chart and skipping some of the more heinous Mystery cards (two Influence of the Order cards, one elder already dead, and the Madness) it was a brutal couple of rounds. I probably saw about six KOs in total for my heroes, more than I think I'd previously seen throughout all five games I'd played in.

The biggest problems I ran into with the Thief at this juncture are entirely tied to his low statistics.

Honor 1
Spirit 1
Cunning 4
Combat 1 (I see I originally posted him having 2 Combat in the original write-up, but I don't believe that change would have helped him much in my test game, since he rarely tried to cause wounds as much as avoid them)
Wounds 2

While he is not alone in having the 2 Wounds nor the low Combat, the combination did lead to several deaths. Four of the potential D3 options will kill him, and the low Honor and Combat mean he has trouble killing monsters AND raising his stats through training. One advantage to the low Honor is that he will almost always be attacked last when in the same spot as another Hero when a monster attacks.

I was pretty lucky with some good items found early on by the Scarlet Shadow (who also ended up with enough investigation to buy the Thief the padded jacket, the Old Map (for the additional honor) and the Tools of Science pretty quickly) which helped boost his spirit a little higher, which was great when the Ghostly Soldiers showed up. He did engage in one round of combat with a Barghest Hound and stole some Investigation from it, but he lost them all when the Barghest attacked back.

On the one hand, this all makes me want to adjust his stats more than abilities. I don't think the additional combat would have made that great a difference when he keeps dying anyway, and low Honor just seems thematic with him being a Thief. And while being able to train Spirit or Cunning higher would have been grand (I failed all three attempts at training I tried), those will not help with survivability either. Simply giving him one more Wound would seem the easiest fix here, but that just seems unimaginative.

Which brings me to the idea of new/different abilities. Several ideas came to me while playing him, though I am certain I wouldn't want to use them all.

While using his Steal ability on a Barghest hound, it occurred to me that instead of having to choose between attacking and trying to rob the creature, they could be combined, not unlike the old Mug ability from some of the early Final Fantasy games.
- Either you could simply claim one investigation token for each wound you cause (some monsters cause you to lose one per wound they cause, so this has some precedent), or perhaps you could simply roll both. One Cunning role to attempt to steal (again, with one token given for each success), and then an attack. This iteration could only be performed on the first round, so if you DID still wish to escape, you could.
- The only problem I have with the first option is the importance on Combat instead of Cunning, so I did consider saying this option only exists so long as the Thief has hold of the Tools of Science (or any similar item for Cunning). At first I didn't want to simply say the Thief could use Cunning for his combat, but then I remembered that Brother Marcus can do just that, so why not?
- This would allow the Thief to still be able to defeat monsters while also making use of his unique abilities, most important when playing solo or in the competitive games. Further, the maximum amount of Investigation you could get from his base statistics is four, not a huge amount, especially when you consider that would require you to succeed on every dice roll.
- Perhaps the best compromise is to simply say that with each natural 6 rolled, the thief gains one investigation.

The second change with abilities would tie in directly to his poor survivability. There seem to be several thematic options for a Thief that could work, though I am unsure of how much they would need balanced.
- May attempt to dodge every attack that comes his way, perhaps the old roll a d6 for each wound, dodging one for each success on a roll (5 or 6, maybe even 4 if it doesn't seem to succeed often enough).
- A sort of 'live to fight another day' ability where the Thief can pay something to avoid all wounds they would otherwise be hit with this round. Either 2 investigation per wound (a good balance to being able to gather one token for each Wound, according to the first ability), or perhaps the ability to escape from during a combat round. This latter option could be chosen after the enemy rolls their dice, but it would negate all of the Thief's rolls for the same round. As an example, the Thief rolls his four Cunning while in combat with a Barghest Hound, and scores three wounds, gaining three investigation, and nearly killing the beast. The hound however rolls four sixes, killing the unwounded Thief twice over. Instead, he chooses to escape, forfeiting the three wounds he would have caused (erasing them from existence such as in the case of a Showdown with a villain), as well as the three Investigation he would have received. This is a bit craven, but no one said he wasn't a coward.

The last change then, is to the Thief's ability to steal from the Shops. I'm not unhappy with the options as I provided them above, but I felt like it was something to put off until much later while playing the game tonight, which isn't super fun. Though with how poorly I did, perhaps I should have taken the punishment and grabbed something early.
- I was thinking instead, of a sort of cross between the two as provided in the original post. When planning on making a purchase, the Thief has to state his intent to try and steal, and to state what item he would like to steal. That way, the cost of the item could be used as it's difficulty. Now here is where I run into a problem: How to actually succeed. I've considered that you simply need to get that many successes via a Cunning test. This would really make Cunning more appealing, but I still feel like even having 10 Cunning would in no way give you great odds of being able to steal some of the high end items. And you'd likely need to collect a lot of corner location items or spend a lot of money training to get your Cunning that high.
- Then I thought perhaps it's the same as above, but the 'difficulty level' is rounded down. Horses would only require one success, Silver Shot would only require 5. This is definitely more manageable, but I worry that adding in the 'half the cost' would bog it down.
- It seems like there should be a somewhat harsh penalty for failure. I considered that you need to have enough investigation to buy the item, and all you are doing is seeing if you can waive the payment (succeed, get the item and keep your investigation, fail and get the item and lose the investigation).
- Alternatively, you could roll first, and then be allowed to take any one item lower than your successes.
- Lastly I considered that perhaps there is just a minor punishment for failing. You say you want the Tools of Science that cost 8, and roll on your Cunning to see if you steal it. If you fail, you still get the item but have to pay the difference in your successes and the original cost. This seems more like a bartering ability than a stealing one however, so I might mention something like this to the boyfriend for his Merchant character.

I've also considered scrapping the whole stealing from the Blacksmith idea outright. It fits, thematically, but I worry it gets too complicated/not useful enough. By getting rid of it, I also would have less compunctions about adding in the Dodge-type ability.
I will likely attempt another playthrough in the next few days with some of the modified abilities, and see how differently things play out. If you made it through all of my thoughts on this matter, cheers. I know I do have a tendency to go on, and on, and on, and on...

-KEvin

I haven't ever played ATOE, yet. My brother found out about it after I started hounding him to play LNOE more. Now he is thinking about grabbing it and the expansions. Cant wait till he gets off his arse and gets this. I really like your character ideas and also all the fun stuff in the gallery. LNOE will always be my fav because I am such a zombie whore, but ATOE certainly has sparked my interest

You sure are typy

I just have a minute here, so these are just some quick thoughts.

-I think allowing the use of Cunning as fight dice is fine, and makes sense. As you mentioned, Brother Marcus does the same with Spirit.

-You might want to start with 3 wounds. Starting with 2 is tough. When I played as Lucy, even with my ability to heal a wound at the start of each turn, it was a scramble to get the Padded Jacket or Robes to gain an extra wound.

-Would it be cheapening the steal ability too much to simplify it and just make it so that when you roll fight dice, you gain Investigation equal to however many wounds the opponent has remaining (before taking damage) for each natural 6 rolled? It’s like Mug. I think stealing from town is neat but awfully complicated and possibly unbalancing.

-The dodge option is cool and in-theme. How about you can roll D6 for each successful hit an opponent scores against you, and you avoid damage on a natural 6 (or a 5+)?

-Live to Fight Another Day could work, but I think there needs to be a risk of failure (a roll of some kind), or a fairly large cost. Instead or additionally, you could consider something like a Glancing Blow ability: Once per turn, the thief may spend 8 Investigation to reduce all damage from an attack to one wound.

rL

Any updates from last night's trials?
I'm going to start posting my new heroes shortly.

rL

I took most of your suggestions into consideration and used just about all of them, but I not only didn't play as much, but it was the exact opposite of turnout. Not a single minion on the board, the Scarlet Shadow was the one who kept getting hit with all of the negative things that came up, and the Thief succeeded on a bunch of rolls (though not any that were actually adjusted).

I did leave everything where I left it so I could continue testing tonight though. Or whenever.

Science is hard!