Quote:
Originally Posted by davidlhsl
No need for specifics on unreleased figures; but with battles I've been playing so far, I'm weighing different special abilities and deciding which attack type (normal/special) to use, placement of order markers, disengagement risk, battlefield positioning, etc.
|
Well, I wasn't talking about the C3G figure in development, so I can name specific figures because they're my own personal customs. The one I've playtested the most is Fin Fang Foom (not the version posted in my thread, I've made a lot of changes and the current version isn't uploaded - yet). I would tweak some powers and do a few playtests, and then change to different powers and test some more. I played around with things similar to Counter Strike, Healing Powers, and Vanish/Spidey-Sense type powers.
Since Fin Fang Foom isn't as high cost as some we're talking about (he's 750-800, currently), I don't need as large of an army to test him against. One of my favorite heavy-hitter tests against him is Hulk, Iron Man, and Silver Surfer (all official). In my initial tests, sometimes they won, and sometimes they lost horribly. But it was inconsistent, and he had a lot of "swing". That kind of unpredictability can be a fun thing for low-powered, quirky niche figures (someone like Jar-Jar from Star Wars comes to mind), but it isn't desirable in a high-cost hero like Fin Fang Foom.
For example, a lot of times it all came down to which hero went down first. At one point, I had a Counter Strike type power on him and a high defense, around 8 or 9. If Fin Fang Foom took out Iron Man and Silver Surfer first, Hulk was easy to defeat. Since Hulk had to engage in melee, and FFF had a high defense w/ Counter Strike...not a good idea. It essentially made FFF untouchable in melee, and that's an example of not being balanced. However, if FFF took out Hulk first, it was actually fairly easy for Iron Man and Silver Surfer to defeat him at range, because of FFF's size. FFF is so big, he essentially can't move on any normal map. That's not a consideration for all unique entities, but it is for some. By the way, Unique Entity is what I call these guys in my personal customs. It's very similar to what Bats is calling an Event Hero.
From this I learned that FFF
had to have a very long range, otherwise he was a sitting duck. Then low defense/high life, because high defense was game breaking for a figure like that. Healing powers for a figure with that high life (he's around 15-20 life)
can work, but they have to have a much lower probability of working than normal healing powers. It's delicate to balance, so I'm not sure it's worth it. I'm still working on that. But one way to deal with that sort of thing, and address what Matt Helm is talking about, is to require order markers for things that other figures may not require them for. For example, Unique Entity figures could have more powers that say "Instead of attacking with
X, do this...". That way, you don't always get 3 attacks with a 1,000 point figure, because you have to give some of those up to do other things (like heal).
Of course, some of the issues I had was due to the size of the physical figure limiting his movement, which could (and maybe should!) be another thread entirely.