Custom Hero Classes

[Drhoolala]

Hello,

I'm a long time reader, first time poster. I made 100 extra characters over the years and am interested in getting community feedback on abilities and power balance, as well as typos (which, despite repeated editing, I know still exist). Many of the characters mention specialized spells or items, some of which I got around to making and many of which I'm still working on. Maybe eventually I'll get around to posting those for feedback, too. Also, I'm going through another bout of editing, so I'll upload these in chunks as I finish that. Some significant alterations I made include:

Generally speaking, each character has a skill they start with, mentioned on the back section above the training level box, and a skill they can learn and level up in training by spending gold between quests. Lvl 1= Apprentice for 1,000 gold, etc...
Eventually, in the plot arc I'm working on, multi-classing will also be available. I'm just brainstorming at this point, but I'm thinking it'll cost 6,000 gold along with a specific, rare, and consumable item that is tied to the plot.
Originally, I had a set amount of moving, but based on feedback here I changed it back to 2 dice each.
In the original game, characters can move and perform an action. I've written movement as an action in itself, and that characters can take two different actions each turn. Thus someone can move and attack, or attack and search, or search and cast a spell, etc...
I've tried consolidating all searches into one action, but I've been reconsidering that and therefore on these character cards it's written such that characters can only search for one type of thing at a time.
Each character has an alignment, mostly for flavor purposes, but also I set a rule that a team can't have a good and evil aligned character at the same time. Also, I designed a quest arc for a villain team where players are trying to thwart Mentor and these quests play off the heroes' quests. For example, there's a villain quest where the team has to infiltrate Sir Ragnar's castle and kidnap him.
Additionally, in the quests I'm writing both teams start with specific base characters. The "heroes" start with Barbarian, Dwarf, Elf, and Wizard; the "villains" start with Barbarian, Thief, Dark Elf, and Wizard. The rest of the characters become available as NPCs and/or multi-classing. Obviously people can do whatever they want with these if they use them in their own games. However, I know that they are almost all broken, and in the materials I'm formulating the challenges and monsters will also get significantly more powerful than the basic Heroquest materials. Hopefully I'll find ways to ramp up the difficulty that feels like a natural progression that keeps pace with the heroes, unlike the base game which (in America) throws almost every monster in the book at you on the very first quest.
I notably changed the visual layout on the front of the cards, opting to additionally use symbols for the stats. This allowed me to make them significantly smaller while still conveying all the information.


Also, editing takes a long time, so as people offer feedback I'll gladly incorporate ideas and criticisms, but it'll take a while and I might only update a few at a time.











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[Goblin-King]

You ask about balance... Is everything else in the game the same? Or do you use custom items and monsters?

As for attaching an image...
Copy the image-file address into your post.
Select the address and press the [Img] button at the top of your writing window.
It'll look something like this:

[img]http://www.imagehostingwebpage.com/yourpicture.jpg[/img ]

To the best of my knowledge you can't share pictures from google drive though.
You got to use something like photobucket or even facebook.

[j_dean80]

I'm probably not the one to give feedback on characters but I did notice the Bounty Hunter is standing on someone dressed like they are in the 21st century.

Also, I'm sure several people here would be interested in your "evil" Quests, including myself.

[GimmeYerGold]

For the two actions each turn, could you do two of the same action, like attack twice, for instance?

[mitchiemasha]

Lot's to like here. I'm a bit of a layout freak and i'd say work a bit on that. it's good to have the images overlapping the edge but the text in places is a little too close. I'd consider not doing the stats in a straight line down. Off setting them but keeping it consistent.

What does =items mean?
Why do your small characters have such high defence? is it because they are small so harder to hit?

No dice rolling for movement, each character has a set amount they can move.

This is seriously frowned upon by us and very un HQ... It completely changes the feel of the game and how things play out. Equally as bad as removing the combat dice.

Another design tip would be to not use a white shadow to help the text stand out and to use a lighter shade of the image.

[Drhoolala]

Good feedback thus far, thanks a bunch.

I'm basically using the original items, although I briefly toyed with adding one of the expanded armories someone posted in the forums. I had some ideas for simple weapons/items I'd add, referenced as certain characters' starting items, but that's as far as I've gone down that rabbit hole.

When I refer to items in the stats, that's based on the original characters' stats. If you stripped away their starting gear, they would use 0 attack dice and 2 defense dice. "Items" refers to any equipment that states it adds to attack or defense. Also on the stats, I did intentionally make some of the smaller characters higher defense because they're harder to hit, but didn't explain that in their abilities.

As for the layout of the symbols on the front and staggering them, I'm not sure I can do much to them without shrinking either the symbols or the character images; is that what you had in mind? I'm not totally in love with the layout of the fronts thus far because they do feel a little bit cluttered to me. However, I'm trying to present extra information on the fronts, so it ends up being a bit more cramped. Also, I print these out at possibly as much as 75% the original character card sizes (4 characters/page) so they're larger and closer together to fit on the smaller scale. I

Also, have you ever tried playing with set movement rather than dice rolling? In my experience, if there are monsters on the board, everyone is going to be ganged up bashing them to death and not moving anyways, or if there aren't any monsters then they're going to strategically place themselves in front of the next door, rinse/repeat. To me, dice rolling for movement adds significant amounts of time and busywork to the gameplay, but not fun. I'd rather let people sorta roleplay their movement more, and of course stop them if they wander into a trap and whatnot. I'm very much on the fence about the best way to do this, though; one friend suggested only using dice for movement when monsters are present. I'm very much interested in hearing other people's opinions on the matter. For example, what are the aspects of dice rolling to move that you think are most important? What does it add to the game, and why do you suppose people think it's necessary?

Also, thanks for the colored shadow tip. The white shadow wasn't my fave, but it just didn't occur to me to do colored shadows. I think that'll make a noticeable improvement.

[mitchiemasha]

If you stagger the symbols it can be done with out shrinking them, giving the appearance of more space.

Playing with out roll to move is boring. There are no chases ever. The maths are present. if you can get away, it is know, if the monster can get away, it is know. Sometimes simply escaping the dungeon has created epic moments in our games. We also have double 1's hazard. This makes every turn the heroes have a risk. No more wasting turns for high rolls etc.

With out dice, this is all that ever happens

In my experience, if there are monsters on the board, everyone is going to be ganged up bashing them to death and not moving anyways, or if there aren't any monsters then they're going to strategically place themselves in front of the next door, rinse/repeat.

No more fun with Goblin archers (Move action Move). Will he get away, won't he get away, can he get another shot in before the Heroes catch him? Pure in your face moments. A Hero can't always progress at full skill. I high roll represents good footing should you need it, a low roll bad footing. The average roll is 7 and what most fixed movements are anyways.

A dice mod could be dwarfs d4's, Humans d6's, elfs d8's. I leave it as 'd6's for all' but in character creation, 1 Mind point can be used to unlock agility, use d8's for movement and melee combat exchange squares. It's more of an elf ability but can be added to any character you're creating as long as you have the MP.

I noticed you kept the Body and Mind add up to 10, I use this too.

Here's my character creation with quite a simple self balancing system.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BzUqo ... VJ4Zzl6RGc

[Drhoolala]

Neat pdf. I think that's a totally valid perspective about movement dice. In order to minimize complexity, I'd probably keep it to d6s. Also, taking away the dice for movement does make quests go considerably faster, and in most cases that's been a positive. A session usually takes about 1-1.5 hours, which has been great since the people I was playing with could only meet on weeknights and had work. The board is so small, and usually at least one person ends up getting the crossbow, so fleeing monsters doesn't often seem possible. The power level of the game, even at its original level, also seems pretty slanted towards the heroes, so they rarely need to flee and therefore that hasn't come up either. It's an interesting conundrum.

[Drhoolala]

Also, is this what you mean by "staggering"?

[mitchiemasha]

Yes, that is exactly what i meant. Still a little more wiggle work. I think the white shadow looked better but on the brown it wants more of slightest brown tint. The shadow on the short sword looks close. Use the colour selection tool and click random places off the lightest part of the background images to get a good starting point. If you flip the boot (might look worse), move speed along, this could become a middle item not as wide, speed is too close to the edge. The icons and text are too close to each other.

The icons shouldn't be wider than the top Icon.
'Training levels' needs moving down. 'Price of training' moved up. This full section moved left and up (up very slightly). Journey man doesn't have enough space.
The text at the top needs moving down and in, very slightly. You could use smaller text on the back seeing as the main text on the front is smaller.

All these little things add up to something that is pleasing to the eye. A lot of people think it doesn't matter but still look at things and say yeah that's amazing, not realising why it is amazing.

The main character title might need to be bolder too or 'Actions:' etc is too bold.

edit: I used to design the club flyers for an event we ran for 8 years, long time ago now. I wasn't particularly good at it but picked up a thing or 2. I was very lucky that the designer at the print shop was willing to take a lot of time to explain things to me, no fee. Most other places would of simply printed what I gave them.