The Book of Doctor Doom (Sorcerer)

[Yodaking]

Congrats on the new job. We'll still be here once you have settled into a new routine.

[Tornado]

Grats!

[japes]

It's not like you are holding up a release or a Public Spot anymore.

[Arkham]

Congrats!

[Yodaking]

This design was mentioned in the Wong thread so I wanted to address it here rather than continue to discuss this design out in the public space. Considering everything that Doom II can already do, giving him potentially 3 turns with 1 OM does seem like overkill so I now concur that a change to Wong should be made. Just a FYI should you start up your initial tests before a change to Wong is officially made.

[Ronin]

Two games in with Doom so far. Skipped right to the army tests due to the nature of Mystic Domination. Had one game where his d20 was on fire and he did great, one game where things went against him and he went down pretty hard. Thinking he might be coming in a little weak, because in the game where he never failed a Mystic Domination roll (and got an extra turn 5 out of 7 times!) and most everything went his way, his team didn't win by that much. I did want to suggest a few tweaks to Mystic Domination before I ran more games with him:

MYSTIC DOMINATION
After taking a turn with Doctor Doom, you must roll the 20-sided die. If you roll X or lower, all special powers on this card are negated for the rest of the game. X is 1 greater than the number of Invocation Markers on this card. If you roll 15 or higher and you revealed an Order Marker on this card at the start of your turn, you may choose a Unique Hero within 4 clear sight spaces of Doctor Doom. Take temporary control of that figure and take an immediate turn with that figure. At the end of that turn, control of the chosen figure returns to the player who controlled the figure before the Mystic Domination.

The changes are:

• Raised the success roll from 14 to 15
• Adjusted the requirements for failing the roll - you no longer subtract from the roll for Invocation Markers. The goal here was to keep the cut-off for a successful roll static, so his odds of success aren't affected by Invocation Markers, but the failure rate still is. As-is, adding Invocation Markers is a trade-off (better Attack/Defense for less Mystic Domination success) with a risk attached, whereas I'd prefer it to be strictly a benefit with a risk attached.
• Lowered failure rate - Each Invocation Marker only bumps his odds of failure by 1 rather than by 2. At a 25% failure rate (max under the current SP version), he's highly likely to negate himself within 3-4 turns. In fact, he's got a 44% chance of doing it in just 2. Lowering the max to 15% gives him a slightly longer lease on life, which I prefer.
• Moved the OM requirement so you have to roll after taking a turn with him no matter what, but still need the OM reveal for the extra turn. Otherwise you could just load him up with a couple Invocation Markers and use Zemo or whoever to activate him. No extra turns that way, but you'd have a 7 attack/7 defense Magical Defense figure with none of the risk.

So generally, trying to take a little of the edge off some of his downsides, stabilize his value a little, and cover one exploit.

[TrollBrute]

The wording on Mystical Domination is a little bit fiddly, but I like the mechanics of those changes. Would the "if you roll X or lower" part fit better in Invoked Demons? Then Mystical Domination could just be "If you rolled 15 or higher for Invoked Demons, blah blah blah." A little weird maybe, but I think the theme would come across better. As it is, the actual temporary control aspect of Mystical Domination comes off as more of an afterthought for the power. Or maybe just bump him to 4 powers? Never my favorite option, but it might read better.

[Ronin]

Yeah, the wording is a little weird, but I don't think it's too bad. Probably a good call that the "X or lower" clause would fit better in Invoked Demons, which would leave us here:

INVOKED DEMONS
At the start of each round, you may place a black Invocation Marker on this card, to maximum of 2 Invocation Markers. Add 1 to Doctor Doom's Attack and Defense numbers for each Invocation Marker on this card. When rolling for Mystic Domination, if you roll X or lower, where X is 1 greater than the number of Invocation Markers on this card, all special powers on this card are negated for the rest of the game.

MYSTIC DOMINATION
After taking a turn with Doctor Doom, you must roll the 20-sided die. If you roll 15 or higher and you revealed an Order Marker on this card at the start of your turn, you may choose a Unique Hero within 4 clear sight spaces of Doctor Doom. Take temporary control of that figure and take an immediate turn with that figure. At the end of that turn, control of the chosen figure returns to the player who controlled the figure before the Mystic Domination.

[Lord Pyre]

Pretty darn cool to see a sorcerer Doom design. I actually read this story arc with him when it came out. Good work here

[Ronin]

Thanks! Good to have someone else who's read the story sign off on it.

[Ronin]

Played a couple more games with Doom. Going to go test Rover before I swing around and finish Doom up. So far, his best buddy is Batman III. Having some initial success running Doom with Batman and some Archers to snag a few JL markers. Not broken-good, but it's definitely Doom's go-to risk-minimizing strategy. Want to try it against 1 or 2 more different armies before I type up my report and call the initial done.

The Doombots are proving to be pretty much the same value as they are for Doom (I). 1-2 is good, but more than that and you're unlikely to get your value back. Partially because Decoy of Doom can fail, and partially because Doom isn't worth so much once Mystic Domination backfires and he negates himself. When that happens, any infrastructure you've built around him loses a lot of value.

[Lazy Orang]

First off, glad to be aboard.

Second, cool idea to do a Sorcerer Doom design (especially considering the new magic system, which I'm glad I finally know what's happening with - it's been tantalising me for ages ).

Third, though, does his big power really need to be another mind control power? I mean, I'm sure it's thematic, but this is Doctor Doom, isn't he meant to be able to do a lot of different things? I like the design mostly, but I'm not that excited by the thought of one of his big two signature powers basically being another generic Mind Control (albeit with a risk attached) - I just feel like something a little more interesting could be done here, but maybe I'm missing something .