by Jafazo » February 25th, 2019, 12:31 am
I'm a little late to the party but here's what I think.
Rude Introductory Text
Just an opinion, I don't care for the wording on the Elven Sorceress' card. The obvious, "I'm better than the Wizard." thing isn't a nice thing to say. The heroes are encouraged to cooperate, not start out with, "I'm better than you." ideas. Also, throughout the game it's clear that Mentor selects these heroes himself, I'd stick with the theme or it'll start to seem like some cheap 'Now Hiring' bit.
Suggestion Solution (Something like this...)
"You are the Elven Sorceress, a High Elf emissary of Ulthuan with the ability to cast 4 powerful spells once per quest. Although your spell selection is small, their power is unmatched. In combat, however, you are weak. Therefore, you must cast your spells wisely."
Disliking the total of 11 between Body and Mind
4 Body, 7 Mind. She breaks the 10th barrier, nice, I don't like it. I'm a fan of keeping the heroes at the total of 10 and it's hard to say what a good trade off for an extra body or mind point to exceed that would be.
Suggestion Solution
Give her 5 mind / 5 body or 6 mind / 4 body.
Disliking her playstyle
She seems like an exaggerated glass cannon to me. She can cast one hard hitting overkill spell that deals so much overflow damage it goes to waste most of the time, one hard healing spell only a character with more than 6 body points will ever fully benefit from, one hard defensive spell that'll give her an unnecesary amount of protection most of the time, and one 'who cares about it?' spell. Gonna be honest, she's not at all appealing to me.
Suggestion Solution
I'm guessing the idea is to make her a kind of, "Uses less spells but they pack a whallop" type character. Someone particularly good against the big bad boss. Have to admit, that's not an easy character type given Heroquests tendency for monsters with low body points, but it's doable.
I'd give her access to a 2 combat dice weapon that can be used adjacent or ranged. Normally HQ doesn't allow you to use a ranged weapon in melee combat. Your Elven longbow could fit this role nicely. Limit her to only that weapon and an Elven sword that gives 3 combat dice to attack, melee only, no diagonal. Keep her at 2 defend dice. The sacrifice in defense offsets the improved physical attack power so she becomes useful in smaller combat scenarios without overshadowing the Wizard. With such weak defense, a good idea would be for her to stock up on potions of defense as much as possible and use them anytime she's attacked (potions can be used at anytime).
Don't let her use the Wizards / Elf artifacts. It's bad enough the Elf and Wizard have to share them even though they really only benefit the Wizard. It could also turn into a problem when she stores those hard hitting spells into a Spell Ring or uses a Wand of Magic to drop nuclear bombs into your game. The trade off to her powerful spells is they're limited, keep it that way. She can still use other artifacts like the ring of return. Include text in her card that says she cannot use anything that cannot be used by the Wizard. Wording is key so it doesn't sound unappealing. Maybe something like, "If the Wizard cannot use it, neither can you." The game specifies what the Wizard can't use so you'll be covered in making it clear she can't use Borin's armor, Orc's Bane etc. That'd just be overpowered. As for anything that can be used by the Wizard, she isn't a Wizard so she can't use it. You'd just need to make her custom toys and write, "May only be used by the Elven Sorceress" to isolate them for her alone.
Disliking the Hero vs Hero potential
She can kill other Heroes but they can't kill her. Besides, heroes shouldn't be killing each other.
Suggested Solution
Change Lightning so it doesn't damage everyone in a 2x2 area. Hero vs Hero conflict isn't supported by the game and introducing it could lead to game breaking problems. With this spell the Sorceress can effectively kill any hero she chooses and take their stuff. If you allow heroes to sell things back to merchants in town for some gold it'd be appealing to try and have heroes voluntarily die, she could take all their stuff, they create new characters, she'd return their stuff and sell their starting weapons for extra gold. The Wizard had better behave too. "All monsters in the area." seems like a better choice.
Stricks is a typo and should be Strikes.
I think Globe of Protection may be broken
Globe of Protection is written poorly by saying it lasts until there are no monsters on the board. The useless True View spell would be useful here. At the start of any quest she could cast True View a few times to get a monster placed onto the board. If she can do it, it'll most likely be behind a closed door and monsters don't open closed doors so she'll be running around with 6 + her gear in defend dice at the beginning of a few games until they come upon that viewed room. If Enchantress charms a weak monster repeatedly it could help keep that bonus going longer.
So yeah, that's it at a glance
Unless you specify your version I'm going by the US rules.