The Ethereal, a custom wizard character https://bwarhammerquest.runboard.com/t90678 Runboard| The Ethereal, a custom wizard character en-us Thu, 28 Mar 2024 17:18:22 +0000 Thu, 28 Mar 2024 17:18:22 +0000 https://www.runboard.com/ rssfeeds_managingeditor@runboard.com (Runboard.com RSS feeds managing editor) rssfeeds_webmaster@runboard.com (Runboard.com RSS feeds webmaster) akBBS 60 Re: The Ethereal, a custom wizard characterhttps://bwarhammerquest.runboard.com/p563184,from=rss#post563184https://bwarhammerquest.runboard.com/p563184,from=rss#post563184Thanks OldWarrior for replying. Just got to a dungeon today and just a few rooms in we came across another objective room (not the one were looking for) and despite the power of this character and my friends who are pretty strong too it just shows the luck of the dice can give you some pretty cruel odds. Since were using the expanded monster tables were getting some weird underwater creatures (blood kraken and Silverfish) that are multiplying and healing faster than we can kill them and have filled up our dungeon. We are almost sure to die. nondisclosed_email@example.com (Questicus)Wed, 22 Mar 2017 07:34:35 +0000 Re: The Ethereal, a custom wizard characterhttps://bwarhammerquest.runboard.com/p563181,from=rss#post563181https://bwarhammerquest.runboard.com/p563181,from=rss#post563181Oops! I am afraid the poll allows one voter to vote for all four options at once. I cannot remember whether you can change the poll after you set it up, but probably. I voted for two of them: Rewrite wholesale and Overpowered -- use as boss monster instead. nondisclosed_email@example.com (OldWarrior)Sun, 19 Mar 2017 15:11:01 +0000 Re: The Ethereal, a custom wizard characterhttps://bwarhammerquest.runboard.com/p563180,from=rss#post563180https://bwarhammerquest.runboard.com/p563180,from=rss#post563180Thanks Edquest for your input. So if I wanted to play a magical character that is "not" as powerful as the Wizard (ruins everyone's fun as you says) but still stays relevant and strong throughout the game, what would you say is the closest character to that description you have come across? Any character, custom or expansion (official/unofficial) you have seen will do. nondisclosed_email@example.com (Questicus)Thu, 16 Mar 2017 08:49:52 +0000 Re: The Ethereal, a custom wizard characterhttps://bwarhammerquest.runboard.com/p563179,from=rss#post563179https://bwarhammerquest.runboard.com/p563179,from=rss#post563179the character described is overpowered in too many ways to describe i'm afraid. personally i'd re-think the idea and start again from scratch, to start with don't take the already most powerful character in the game (wizard) and then add things to it! anyway the issue with the wizard normally is lower levels he is okay, just has more options than other warriors. plus the world of wizard only items which means chances are you'll end up with some specific loot eventually. around the middle levels 4-8 normally he enters the sweet spot for wizards: clears whole rooms, heals the whole party, generally can (if the player chooses) act like a moron and ruin everyone's fun. however at level 9+ this tends to suddenly change as fights suddenly contain multiple enemy casters with Dispel abilities and he is lucky to get a spell off! which is an issue for the warriors as a whole in my experience. the idea of pouring in currency to make a combi weapon is a bad plan because currency becomes irrelevant at a certain point and then any warrior with that ability will just make the ultimate weapon of ming doom and slaughter all in their path.nondisclosed_email@example.com (Edquest)Thu, 16 Mar 2017 08:27:50 +0000 Re: The Ethereal, a custom wizard characterhttps://bwarhammerquest.runboard.com/p563176,from=rss#post563176https://bwarhammerquest.runboard.com/p563176,from=rss#post563176What do I personally think makes it most overpowered? Reading the forum most people seem to say the Wizard is the most powerful hero. It clears rooms by himself, heals the whole party up and then teleports back to town leaving the adventurers trudging back! The Ethereal was ok at first but I have found he is doing similar things, I am finding it hard to decide how to make it powerful while still limiting its ability to clear rooms. For example, yesterdays game, we did a delve with multiple objective rooms and almost every time, a lot like my wizard used to the Ethereal dropped some area effect spells and killed the beasts or reduced them to low wounds, allowing them to be mopped up quite handily by the rest of the adventurers. Now, other characters can do this, maybe we need more home-brew rules to give monsters a chance. I thought us rolling on the expanded monster table on the museum would give us more of a challenge but were clearing through now we are level 4-5. Earlier at levels 1 or 2 it felt more steady and we enjoyed the challenge but it seems our characters have reached a peak at 4/5 already or maybe its just lucky rolls. Has some pretty overpowered equipment We have all been quite lucky in our early objective room rolls, we usually have one OR treasure for each character (2 each since were playing 2 characters each), now like I said the Ethereal cannot use most equipment but it can use rings and magical staves and what not, as long as it is not a normal wielded weapon or armour and the wizard can usually use it hes good and at the moment he is using a wand that reduces power costs by 1 and has the staff that allows you to roll two dice for power and choose the result (but any combination of 1 or 2 still has an event). This means we rarely seem to get bad events and I can choose the highest power roll quite often. Pretty sure the staff is not in the main game so maybe its from the custom items list I am using and its more the fault of an overpowered item. Special Ethereal items so I could not resist allowing the character to gain some items. After-all, part of my enjoyment in any dungeon crawler is to pick up sweet loot and improve my character. So I came up with a system that seems sadly overturned, it sounded fun to begin with but now I think its too powerful. Essentially what I can do is craft for a high price (between 5000-7000 ether) special Ethereal items and then, for a price equal to the worth of a chosen weapon I can enchant that weapons special ability to the Ethereal weapon. For example I have an Eldrtich Blade (Ethereal sword basically) that costs 7000 Ether. It has 2 slots on it that can be filled with abilities from weapons, so I payed the worth of a blade of leaping gold (+3 attacks) and the hammer of sigmar (4x damage on a 6) and now I have a sword that has +3 attacks, 4x damage on a 6 and ignores armour (as the Ethereal does anyway with its magic weapons) and of course is magical to boot. Once this happened I realized how powerful it was, and probably did not consider it enough before now. The item has a total cost of around 15k all things considered but at what point does cost not balance an item out in practice?   Questions There is a lot more to the character than this and I have written a small novel here already. So I have a few questions to those who play the game a lot, have home-brew rules; Is it natural for characters to feel overpowered and dungeons to feel easy around level 5? How can I restrain what items my Ethereal can use, while still allowing it to gain less overpowered equipment? See, when I find a hammer if sigmar, dragon sword or blade of leaping gold, I do not want him to be able to use it normally but at the same time I want there to be worth beyond "gold" of finding an item. I do not want the character to be like certain homebrews (or standard) characters who sell every cool suit of armour or weapon they find since they cannot use it. Finding loot is too important to me so how would once advise balancing this system? Thank you for any input, I realize reading this wall may take some time so I understand if nobody comes back to me, I have made a poll for those who have had a quick read through and think some of my ideas in the poll sound good. If anyone wants it, I could post the PDF I have made for the character somewhere if possible or send it via email to anyone who wants to have a look and maybe (would be flattered) play test it for a few rounds. nondisclosed_email@example.com (Questicus)Wed, 15 Mar 2017 23:29:40 +0000 The Ethereal, a custom wizard characterhttps://bwarhammerquest.runboard.com/p563175,from=rss#post563175https://bwarhammerquest.runboard.com/p563175,from=rss#post563175Hey folks, so after our first few games my friend and I (we play 2 characters each) enjoyed the characters in the box (he played Elf and Dwarf, I played Wizard and Barbarian) but we also had a creative itch to scratch, we saw all this pen and paper potential to create something of our own and we have made 2 new warriors each and are going through this new adventure, but unsurprisingly it is too easy. Either the monsters we are rolling are just lucky rolls, we are too well equipped even after the first couple of adventures or its a simple fact our characters are just over thought powerhouses and the power of creating our own has gone to our heads. I am sure this is the case with a lot of new ideas, I am sure many would agree the base game has some balance issues which brings me to the Ethereal, who is based on perhaps the strongest character in the game, the Wizard. I tried to come up with some new ideas myself to try and balance it, but at the same time I wanted a character that will use magic almost exclusively and have some strange ideas besides that may make it a "thinkers" character but I fear hes a bit strong so this thread is really a way of seeing what other people think of it, getting some criticism and maybe some advice on what I can work on The Ethereal The Ethereal in short (apologies if its not, I am prone to too much info...oh here I go again) is a being made of pure magical energy, mana, spirit or what have you and is on a pursuit of learning everything it can about this world, digging up ancient knowledge and devouring the energy of those monsters it comes into conflict with. The Ethereal has most of the rules similar to a wizard, for example it has a power reserve, gains +1 to the power roll per BL, rolls for spells when it trains and gains 5 gold per healed wound on other warriors (which I often forget) but it also has some special rules; Some special rules Ether The Ethereal uses a separate resource to gold to accomplish various things. It uses "Ether" to level up and I think of it a lot like the "experience" the Dwarf Slayer has in the base game. He has gold, but he also has experience to spend on training. Like the Slayer, the Ethereal has an "Ether" value that it can use to not only pay for training, but for buying special Ethereal specific items in its stores. It can collect gold but it has little use for it beyond purchasing things for other warriors, at least in the base game or for avoiding settlement events or travelling hazards that require payment (militia, joining the watch etc). It gains Ether instead of gold for all kills in a dungeon but still gains gold if a dungeon event specifically says it finds gold, or is given gold as a reward by people. The pros of playing an Ethereal Ethereal 1 The Ethereal as it names applies has the "ethereal 1" statistic several monsters in the game have. Made of magic being made of magical energy it is not able to be poisoned, plagued and does not understand the concepts of fear or terror (immune to psychology) Vessel of power The Ethereal can contain power like a wizards staff, in combat any left over power that is unused goes into the store. The store starts off being able to contain 10 power and goes up by 5 for each title level after novice (e.g. a Hero Ethereal would have 20). The store empties after any combat, going back to zero but begins to fill again if the Ethereal goes into combat and has spare power turn by turn. This allows the Ethereal to built up power in combat for its more powerful spells. Magic attacks All its attacks are considered "magical" even when using its energy fists and ignore armour (but not toughness). The cons of playing an Ethereal Unique currency In a way the fact the Ethereal uses Ether as its primary currency, it often has very little gold meaning trading with other warriors (players) and buying resources in the stores is difficult and even at Battle level 5 now my Ethereal has only around 400 gold to its name so if I fall a cropper of some bad luck I could end up no able to pay the ferry man, the militia, or end up joining the watch (and potentially falling afoul of ac cataclysmic event in town) Melee attacks cost currency To influence heavy magical play with the character I made its magical attacks cost 10 Ether x battle level per attack. It is not rare for a few attacks to cost upwards of 100-200+ Ether per turn if I want to deal some blows. Cannot wear normal armour or use most equipment, essentially what I mean by this is the Ethereal can only use what a Wizard could usually use but beyond that, it cannot wear any normal robes or clothing, carry guns or normal weapons and what have you. Cannot eat or drink Initially (there is a skill it can get late in the game for a high price to circumvent this at around battle level 5) it cannot eat or drink, which includes potions or provisions. Meaning its only source of healing would be spells. (not a great place to be when you are the only healer in my group) can be dispelled since it is a magical being it can be dispelled by monsters who have the "dispel" ability. Monsters who can dispel can use it once per turn after power is rolled on the Ethereal and on a successful dispel check the Ethereal takes 1D6 of damage per dungeon level and loses the rolled dice total in power. (went through a couple of rooms where the Ethereal was effectively reduced to zero wounds several times because of high rolls on the table early on in the game and getting wizards/warlocks) Limited spell uses per turn I thought one of those things that made the Wizard so powerful was that with a large enough pool of power as well as power cost reduction items (some wands and things in the game I recall reduce power costs) the Wizard can cast spells until he runs dry, which can often clear several rooms before anyone else gets to fight. The Ethereal can only cast most of its spells once per turn, once per turn/title level or once per combat. So it is a little more limited while still being able to cast some, it cannot do so all dungeon long. Custom spells I have re-written the entire spell list. Some spells are modified for flavor to suit the Ethereal and are very similar to the Wizards, while some are a bit different. I will not post all the spells here now but if anyone is interested I will if asked. nondisclosed_email@example.com (Questicus)Wed, 15 Mar 2017 23:29:20 +0000