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I have customized a few characters. I would like to ask for some feedback about the balance, or additional suggestions.

Alex, the hyper enthusiastic, Job hopper
Male //W W D//
Hyperactive, Kung-fu amateur
-x- Hyperactive: Before the movement phase of the character, roll a dice. 1-2 Must move, 3-4 May search then move, 5-6 May move then search
-x- Kung-fu amateur: When handling a weapon, wins on ties

Lis, the hot teacher
Female, teacher// W W D //
Intuitive, school teacher
-x- Intuitive: At the beginning of her turn, can look the first card of the zombie deck, and decide to re-shuffle the Zombie deck. After using this ability, on a roll of 1-2, she cannot move this turn (but may search).
-x- School teacher: Students sharing a space with Lis can re-roll one of their dice per turn

Linda, a girl and her (MF huge) dog
Female, student // W D//
Lightweight, Brando (dog)
-x- Brando: Linda can place Brando Token in any space at range 3 during her turn (use Betsy rules). Whenever Brando should be removed from the game, on a 3- Brando is killed and can't be used again. Linda can use its movement phase to call back Brando (put the token back to Linda). Sacrifice Brando, avoid Linda 1 wound.

Sensei ,
Male, holyman //W W D//
Aikido, Tao, Holyman
-x- Aikido: Once per fight can choose a dice either his own or enemy’s to be re-rolled. Wins on ties. Can choose to project fended-off enemies to an adjacent space.
-x- Tao: Whenever Sensei would have wounded an enemy, it is fended-off instead.

Albert, the fatty geek
Male, student // W W D //
Youth, fat-ass, counter-strike
-x- Fat-ass: One additional wound. His movement capacity is limited to a maximum of 4. If he stops in the space of a door, the door is "locked" to other heroes.
-x- Counter-strike: When shooting a gun, may add +1 to rolls if this would make the shoot successful.

Monica, bully-victim
Female, student, strange //W D //
Youth, Acne, Someone listening?
-x- Acne: When in the LOS of a shooting hero, on a roll of 1, she's targeted instead of Z. When getting through Zombies can keep moving on a roll of 3 +
-x- Someone listening?: Instead of searching a hero card, she can draw the first card on the discard pile

Faust, erudite of darkness –
Male, strange, academic // W W D //
Dark secret, undead lore
-x-Dark secret: When searching, draws a card from the hero and the zombie deck. If the zombie card can be potentially be used on the character, he can choose which to keep, and return the other and shuffle the deck. When this ability is used, a zombie appears (from the pool or the board) in a random building in the same L-shaped board as the character.
-x-Undead lore: Can take a wound to distribute 1D3 wounds on Zombies sharing a space with him.
Some interesting ideas there. They would be fun to try. Good job with the balance I think. They don't seem to be overtly OP.

What are you trying to do with Monica and the Acne ability with regard to shooting? Is it your intent to get her killed easily? Or for her to be a handicap on other heroes by making them not want to shoot as much? If she gets killed this way does it count as a zombie kill? Does she become a Zombie Hero? Who rolls the die to see if she would be hit? Is she suicidal? or are other Heroes homicidal?
Linda: I'm not a fan of 2-wound, Student heroes without Youth.
And what A. said about Monica.

Alex is SUPER potent. 'Hyperactive', as written, is enough to be a solo ability, without the tiebreaker. If you reverse it so 1-2 is "May move and search", it's less potent -- it softens the punishment for rolling low, but doesn't let you building hop on high rolls while still searching.

Liz -- shuffling a deck is slow in play, and wears cards. You don't want it to be a shuffle. Make it a "put on bottom of zombie deck" instead. Any rationale behind her not moving after this? Especially if it's made a "put on bottom" instead of a reshuffle, the Zombie may eventually get to a giant cluster of all the great juicy cards that were skipped; I don't think it's worth losing a move. Overall, with the small change, I like her.

Sensei -- I like the giving of his title as his name. Flavorful for me. I like his first ability (though it needs a little wording cleanup on the second bit of it)... the second makes him a terrible, terrible character to play. Make it so he can't wound zombie heroes instead of all zombies? Flavorful, but not totally emasculating.

Faust -- Interesting... I'd have to see it playtested.
(01-29-2016 02:31 PM)ATOEtalGeek Wrote: [ -> ]What are you trying to do with Monica and the Acne ability with regard to shooting? Is it your intent to get her killed easily? Or for her to be a handicap on other heroes by making them not want to shoot as much?
If she gets killed this way does it count as a zombie kill? Does she become a Zombie Hero? Who rolls the die to see if she would be hit? Is she suicidal? or are other Heroes homicidal?

Fine remarks indeed!. I was thinking that she might be considered a zombie by mistake. This is not a homicidal evil instinct of other heroes (like if they hate her), rather a small confusion (like, oh shit! that was not a zombie!). I house-rules for shots* (see below).

If she becomes a Zombie hero or not depends on how do you believe the virus reaches new hosts. Do you think Zombie disease is a virus in the air and everybody is infected (like in The walking dead) or rather, it is a kind of disease transmitted in saliva (like the rage for instance). I'd rather use the second. The shooter rolls the dice (both the chance of shooting at her, and the shoot itself) after all she's for nothing in the act of getting shot, just walking around with her ugly face!

My shooting and combat house rules against humans:
On a basic type of damage, I’d use 1D4 wounds when a hero is shot. (Yes you have to have D4... this is used to represent that any hero (even Sam and Ed Baker can be killed if shot). The 4 represents a shot in the head, so that even if you consider that heroes come back to life after a shot, will not.

I also considered more ruling and you can add some changes depending on each weapon, for example:
Revolver-like D6 where 1-3=1 wound, 4-5 = 2 wounds, 6 = Kill
Shot-gun D6 1-2 =1W, 3-4=2w, 5=3W, 6=Kill
Hunting rifle (2D3 – 1) wounds

For melee and brawling I consider the following: when a hero is fended-off, roll a D6, 1-3=nothing, 4-6=1 wound. Anything which would have meant a wound is like the revolver: 1-3 =1W, 4-5=2w, 6=Kill. Anything which would have killed a Zombie instantly also kills heroes.

Thanks for the tips!

(01-29-2016 02:39 PM)mqstout Wrote: [ -> ]Linda: I'm not a fan of 2-wound, Student heroes without Youth.
And what A. said about Monica.

Aha, yes both have Youth for certain, I forget to put it.

(01-29-2016 02:39 PM)mqstout Wrote: [ -> ]Alex is SUPER potent. 'Hyperactive', as written, is enough to be a solo ability, without the tiebreaker. If you reverse it so 1-2 is "May move and search", it's less potent -- it softens the punishment for rolling low, but doesn't let you building hop on high rolls while still searching.

Here I wanted something slightly unpredictable. This is why on 1-2 must move. Which means that one every three turns, he won't be able to search (cause he's so excited moving around and paranoid about zombies). When in a building, where he wanted to search and keep searching the next turn (something frequent), 3-6 is not particularly useful. Then 3-4, and 5-6 can be quite useful, but sometimes you would get the one option which was not the most interesting... I used it the other day only with this ability, and was not great. This is why I added a "soft" combat ability, which represents that he's always moving staff with his hands (like juggling or something). But making hyperactive a more "robust/trustable" ability and remove the second is an option.

(01-29-2016 02:39 PM)mqstout Wrote: [ -> ]Liz -- shuffling a deck is slow in play, and wears cards. You don't want it to be a shuffle. Make it a "put on bottom of zombie deck" instead. Any rationale behind her not moving after this? Especially if it's made a "put on bottom" instead of a reshuffle, the Zombie may eventually get to a giant cluster of all the great juicy cards that were skipped; I don't think it's worth losing a move. Overall, with the small change, I like her.

Aha, you might be right, thanks for the tip. The shuffle was intended, as you explained, not to put all the good cards on the bottom which is quite terrible for the Z player. the 1-2 rule is to penalize slightly this quite good ability.


(01-29-2016 02:39 PM)mqstout Wrote: [ -> ]Sensei -- I like the giving of his title as his name. Flavorful for me. I like his first ability (though it needs a little wording cleanup on the second bit of it)... the second makes him a terrible, terrible character to play. Make it so he can't wound zombie heroes instead of all zombies? Flavorful, but not totally emasculating.

I was thinking of some incredible in combat character, who refuse any form of killing. Without the malus I thought it was overpowered. But perhaps I can remove the projection skill included in Aikido, and just leave Holyman, and remove also Tao. Thanks.

(01-29-2016 02:39 PM)mqstout Wrote: [ -> ]Faust -- Interesting... I'd have to see it playtested.
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