The Gaming Den

FrankTrollman wrote:

Starmaker wrote:Incidentally, did FFG fix the auto-win character and item that allow the player to draw two cards and choose one?

I don't really know what you are talking about here. Darrel the Photographer is one of the best characters [..]

'
Not in Talisman, he isn't.

The only auto-win character that comes to my mind is the one that lets everyone spend her clue tokens. We have yet to come close to losing a game when someone is playing her.

If she's talking Talisman, then the Prophetess, the Monk, and the Wizard are all ludicrously powerful in their own ways. Game balance isn't even a dim concept. Th difference in power between the Monk/Prophetess and the Troll/Thief is so frickin stark that it's scarcely even playable.

Even comparing the shittiest characters in Arkham (probably Amanda and Sister Mary) to the best (probably Patrice and Daisy) there just isn't the massively absurd power difference between even a moderately good Talisman character like the Ghoul and a kind of shitty Talisman character like the Elf.

-Username17

Starmaker wrote:Incidentally, did FFG fix the auto-win character and item that allow the player to draw two cards and choose one?

Maybe?

Whenever you (the Prophetess) have to draw Adventure cards, you may discard one card of your choice that you do not wish to encounter and draw one more card to replace it, which you must encounter.

Linky.

That's not as good as the original ability, but I don't know if it's nerfed enough. I haven't played that game in over 15 years.

I seem to recall the Skaven in Talisman as being the gold standard.

mean_liar wrote:I seem to recall the Skaven in Talisman as being the gold standard.

What did he do? I never played the new Talisman. I think mine was 2nd edition, where your best characters were basically the warrior, Chainsaw warrior and a few others. The prophetess was decent, but you were generally better going to high mage from a warrior type. That gave you casting and combat abilities.

The prophetess was kickass, but took awhile to level up, since your strnegth was only 2, and you had to fight stuff to power up.

What was the deal with the monk btw? I never remember him being any good.

C'mon, Troll is Strongest of them all! Expansions really factor in strongly to the game. "Straight up" Talisman, the Troll isn't so bad, as there aren't that many craft monsters; if the troll focuses on Strength, he can make a run for the Crown while other players are fumbling around.

While Prophetess is pretty good, Centaur is what I considered most powerful. Being able to control the movement (you moved the die roll, + or - up to 2, if I recall correctly) is just stupid good. Once you're stronger than another player, you can land on that other player at will, and take away most anything that player gets.

Prophetess might get good stuff, but Centaur can take most of it away.

RandomCasualty2 wrote:What was the deal with the monk btw? I never remember him being any good.

We banned the Monk after maybe 2 games of someone using him. As I recall, he added his two scores together for combat? Something like that. It gets out of hand surprisingly quickly.

Murtak wrote:Descent is worth a look, if only to steal some of the nice ideas they had. But, for the sake of all that is good, don't even think about copying any of their rules. Seriously, that game is a shining example of how not to write rules. Right down to using neither a useful table of contents nor an index. Not properly defining defining terms, using "when" instead of "before" or "after", refusing to clarify rules on their forums - this game has it all.

That... actually applies to most FFGs .

I cite Descent often largely because it's a tactical game, as opposed to Arkham which is more of "whole campaign in one sitting." Since Lago wanted AoOs, I assume he wants a tactical game.

FrankTrollman wrote:I don't really know what you are talking about here. Darrel the Photographer is one of the best characters, but he does not always make you win. But I'm not sure if that's even who you mean, because actually "draw an extra card of some specific type and discard one you don't want" is an incredibly common ability. Off the top of my head:

• Darrel (Town Encounter Cards - Awesome)
• Gloria (Gate Encounter Cards - Very Good)
• Bob (Common Items - Awesome)
• Monterey (Unique Items - should be awesome, but his character is not well suited to taking advantage of it, and ends up mediocre)
• Dexter (Spells - kind of shitty)
• Amanda Sharpe (Skills - probably the worst character)
• Rita (Injuries - Mediocre)

But then there are some related abilities, mostly from expansions:

• Lola (discard ad redraw skills - mediocre)
• Daisy (starts with the book that lets you dumpster dive the entire spell deck - awesome)
• Ursula (has encounters in addition to using board text, and can spend a clue to negate an encounter - awesome)
• Jacqueline (once per game, can spend clues to redraw the Mythos card - awesome)

-Username17

I was thinking Darrel too when I said "extremely good". However in retrospect I think Starmaker may have referring to Daisy since he mentioned "Auto-win character and item".

The awesomeness of Draw-redraw in Arkham honestly depends on what you're drawing-redrawing. I'd say Darrel is the best because Arkham encounters often give you crazy good rewards even when you don't do anything.

Skills, OTOH, are generally awful. My first play through was with Amanda and... let's just say we resorted to having characters commit suicide to make the final battle easier for the only guy with the shotgun (albeit we may have misinterpreted a rule or two when we did that).

On a side note: One hilarious situation in this game is how the bank will always try to collect on its IOUs even though the end of the world is coming. Yes, there are ways to get around it (and borrowing from the bank is probably not a good idea). But it's kinda hilarious when the only surviving guy is praying that the bank doesn't take away his shotgun just before fighting Chtulu.

<Investigator> I have to save the world dammit! <Bank Collector> We are the bank. Your loan is due!

Doom314 wrote:C'mon, Troll is Strongest of them all! Expansions really factor in strongly to the game. "Straight up" Talisman, the Troll isn't so bad, as there aren't that many craft monsters; if the troll focuses on Strength, he can make a run for the Crown while other players are fumbling around.

I played a Troll in my first playthrough with Talisman. He's good, but I wouldnt' say great. However, running for the Crown is indeed a somewhat viable strategy with this guy.

In my first game, the Ogre managed to get to the crown first using the dungeon shortcut. Predictably, rather than surrender all of us made a run for the Crown to beat the Ogre to death. Only the Troll survived to face the Ogre, and the awesome thing is that the Troll actually won (The Ogre didn't do enough levelling).

Zinegata wrote:On a side note: One hilarious situation in this game is how the bank will always try to collect on its IOUs even though the end of the world is coming. Yes, there are ways to get around it (and borrowing from the bank is probably not a good idea). But it's kinda hilarious when the only surviving guy is praying that the bank doesn't take away his shotgun just before fighting Chtulu.

<Investigator> I have to save the world dammit! <Bank Collector> We are the bank. Your loan is due!

I think it goes more like:

<Investigator> Sorry bank collector dude, I have to declare bankruptcy since I gave away all my belongings and money to someone else. Will you accept this as closure? *gives middle finger*

We never actually do that because it's cheap as hell, but if you were so inclined...

erik wrote:

Zinegata wrote:On a side note: One hilarious situation in this game is how the bank will always try to collect on its IOUs even though the end of the world is coming. Yes, there are ways to get around it (and borrowing from the bank is probably not a good idea). But it's kinda hilarious when the only surviving guy is praying that the bank doesn't take away his shotgun just before fighting Chtulu.

<Investigator> I have to save the world dammit! <Bank Collector> We are the bank. Your loan is due!

I think it goes more like:

<Investigator> Sorry bank collector dude, I have to declare bankruptcy since I gave away all my belongings and money to someone else. Will you accept this as closure? *gives middle finger*

We never actually do that because it's cheap as hell, but if you were so inclined...

Heh.

I'm actually generally not inclined to take loans at all until the world is about to end and we need to do last-minute shopping. That way there's generally not enough time for the interest money to vaporize.

But yeah, giving your stuff to someone else is a way to bypass this problem. It wasn't possible though in that game because the shotgun dude was the only one still alive (or not lost in Time & Space).

FrankTrollman wrote:If she's talking Talisman, then the Prophetess, the Monk, and the Wizard are all ludicrously powerful in their own ways.

The Black Library Prophetess owns the Monk and the Wizard any day of the week. Even if they team up against her. She could (1) cycle spells, (2) look at others' spells and (3) take two adventure cards at once and choose one to encounter. And the Orb of Knowledge enabled the character to take two adventure cards and encounter both at once if he wished.

The Centaur looks like he could kill the FFG version, farming springs and camping the 3 cards middle region space. I never got the revised version or the expansion, though.

From what I recall, the Skaven is similar to Centaur in that he can control his movement.