Justice League Dark Brainstorming

[MrNobody]

Sorry, wrong thread!

I still bust out Alias Q-Tip's equipment cards and play with them. Stuff like that is a lot of fun.

[Yodaking]

I like quozl's change to Avatar of the Green.

Spell could be useful in the right situations.

[Yodaking]

You can put me down for Constantine in the FP. I'll be launching the thread in the public design section today.

[MrNobody]

I'm continuing to read through JLD to get a better idea of the characters. I'm still not super familiar with this version of Black Orchid, but here's what I've got for her so far.

NAME = BLACK ORCHID
SECRET IDENTITY = ALBA GARCIA

SPECIES = METAHUMAN?
UNIQUENESS = UNIQUE HERO
CLASS = AGENT
PERSONALITY = ???

SIZE/HEIGHT = MEDIUM ?

LIFE = 5

MOVE = 5
RANGE = 2
ATTACK = 4
DEFENSE = 5

POINTS = ???

SHAPE-SHIFTING AMBUSH
Once per game, when a figure you control would roll defense dice against a normal attack, you may immediately switch Black Orchid and that figure. The defending figure takes no damage, and you may move any number of Order Markers from the defending figure’s card to this card. Until the end of the round, when rolling Attack Dice for Black Orchid, you may count all Blanks rolled as Skulls. Switched figures will not take any leaving engagement attacks.

PLANT ANIMATION 14
After moving and instead of attacking, roll the 20-sided die for all opponents' figures within two spaces of an Evergreen Tree or Jungle Piece that is within 6 spaces of Black Orchid, one at a time. If you roll 14 or higher, the figure receives one wound.

SUPER STRENGTH

FLYING

@Scapemage for what it's worth, Deadman has used his acrobatic skills while possessing people several times so far. Personally I'm starting to lean towards wanting a possessed acrobatics power for him now.

[LordVenoc]

Originally Posted by quozl

I'd change this so he doesn't just sit in your start zone, which sounds totally boring to me.

How's this?

AVATAR OF THE GREEN
While Swamp Thing is on a grass, swamp, or swamp water space, add one die to his Attack and Defense, and all other friendly figures on grass or swamp spaces rolling defense dice may count one blank rolled as a shield.

I think I would just worry that a borderline always on defense boost like this (especially on some maps) would really jack up his point cost unnecessarily.

[MrNobody]

Originally Posted by LordVenoc

I think I would just worry that a borderline always on defense boost like this (especially on some maps) would really jack up his point cost unnecessarily.

I mean it's not that much crazier than Ivy II. Sure it works on figures with SS, but I'm not sure if the blank=shield is more powerful than an additional die.

[MrNobody]

NAME = SHADE THE CHANGING MAN
SECRET IDENTITY = RAC SHADE

SPECIES = METAN
UNIQUENESS = UNIQUE HERO
CLASS = CHANGING MAN
PERSONALITY = MERCURIAL

SIZE/HEIGHT = MEDIUM 5

LIFE = 5

MOVE = 5
RANGE = 4
ATTACK = 5
DEFENSE = 5

POINTS = ???

MADNESS VEST
Shade adds 2 to his attack when attacking an Insane, Unstable, or Troubled figure. When an opponent's figure would receive one or more wounds from Shade's normal attack, you may choose not to inflict any number of those wounds. For each wound you chose not to inflict, roll a combat die. For each;
-skull you roll, inflict a wound on Shade, or any figure within 2 clear sight spaces of Shade.
-shield you roll, move an Order Marker from this card to another Army Card you control, if possible.
-blank you roll, remove an Order Marker at random from the defending figure’s card.

MADNESS STREAM
At the end of the round, you may choose up to one figure you control adjacent to Shade and roll the 20-sided die. Place Shade on an empty space exactly X spaces away from his original placement, where X equals the number rolled, then place the chosen figure on an empty space adjacent to Shade. If a figure cannot be placed, destroy it. Figures moved with this special power will not take any leaving engagement attacks.

Okay after much rumination, here's another stab at Shade and his Madness Vest.

I think I'm getting closer to capturing the themes of weird, very powerful, and kind of out of control. I'm not too happy with the shield effect, so if anyone has ideas for a slightly negative effect, I'm all ears.

[Yodaking]

I like how the d20 power combos with Constantine as he essentially will give you twice the options for where to go. On the Madness vest idea, I'll say that a few other figures in C3G have that inflict a wound and then give it up for some other effect and I generally don't every use the other effect. It's hard to give up a wound you managed to score from a normal attack, so the benefits for doing so need to be fairly good IMO. Let me give it a go and see if you like what I come up with.

MADNESS VEST
Shade adds 2 to his attack when attacking an Insane, Unstable, or Troubled figure. When an opponent's figure would receive one or more wounds from Shade's normal attack, you may choose not to inflict one of those wounds. Instead roll a combat die, if you roll a....
-skull, inflict a wound on any figure within 3 clear sight spaces of Shade.
-shield, move an Order Marker from the defending figures card to another Army Card that opponent controls, if possible.
-blank, remove an Order Marker from the defending figure’s card.

So you give up an inflicted wound, but then 50% of the time you then can wound someone else that might be harder to score wounds on. 33% of the time you can move an OM off that figures card and onto what you believe to be a worse location for it, and 17% of the time you take away that OM for the round. Important to note that since it doesn't say unrevealed OM, you could remove a revealed OM from Cap's card and turn off the bonuses for the rest of the round. Generally speaking is would still be hard to give up the wound when your opponents figure has no unrevealed OM's on it's card (unless of course you are giving up an overkill wound), but their will be a few times where it's still worth the gamble to do so. Say you are fighting the Teen Titans, a 50% chance to put a W on Nightwing might be worth it, especially if you are engaged with a low def., low life figure like one of Beast Boy's alternate forms.

[MrNobody]

I guess one of the things I liked is that there was a downside, but I get that it would be a poor choice to give up a wound for something that could easily burn you. I'm thinking maybe increase the benefits instead of decreasing the potential downsides;

MADNESS VEST
Shade adds 2 to his attack when attacking an Insane, Unstable, or Troubled figure. When an opponent's figure would receive one or more wounds from Shade's normal attack, you may choose not to inflict one of those wounds. Instead roll a combat die. For each;
-skull you roll, inflict 2 wounds on the chosen figure.
-shield you roll, inflict a wound on Shade.
-blank you roll, move an Order Marker from the defending figures card to another Army Card that opponent controls, if possible.

So you give up a wound in order to get a gamble; 1/2 chances you get to inflict double damage, 1/3 chances you get the damage reflected back at you, and 1/6 chances you can mess with OMs. Zatanna here would kind of serve a double purpose; she can change a shield to a blank to not only give him a positive effect, but steer him away from a negative one as well.

I'm also thinking you could make it mandatory to roll for each wound inflicted instead of choosing to give up a wound. Then you could have a more balanced positive/negative effect.

MADNESS VEST
Shade adds 2 to his attack when attacking an Insane, Unstable, or Troubled figure. After attacking with Shade's normal attack, roll a combat die for each wound you inflicted. For each;
-skull you roll, roll an unblockable attack die either against Shade or against the figure you control closest to Shade.
-shield you roll, you may move an Order Marker from the defending figures card to another Army Card that opponent controls, if possible.
-blank you roll, you may inflict a wound on any figure within 4 clear sight spaces of Shade.

The positives and negatives can be adjusted, I'm thinking the positives and negatives should be balanced so you want to take that gamble of attacking with Shade.

And just to round it off, I also did another version of the Madness Vest that's based off of stuff like Firestorm Matrix or Sersi's Matter Manipulation, but it's not as complete. The one note I have is that I don't think Shade should be able to heal people. I've never seen him do it, and one of the major plot points of the character is that the woman he loves dies, and he basically goes insane trying to fix it.

MADNESS VEST (Firestorm version)
After revealing an Order Marker on this card and instead of taking a turn with Shade, you may roll 4 combat dice, or 6 combat dice if Shade is within 4 clear sight spaces of an opponent's Insane, Unstable, or Troubled figure.
For each blank rolled, you may choose a figure within 4 clear sight spaces and either;
-place a wound marker on the chosen figure’s card
-move an Order Marker in the chosen figure's card to any other card in the chosen figure's army.
If no blanks were rolled, roll an unblockable attack die against either Shade or any friendly figure adjacent to Shade.

[Yodaking]

I kind of like the direction you are heading in with the last idea. Separate it from an attack roll/wounds inflicted and make it a option choice instead of attacking. Then when you really just want to use your normal attack, you can do that, and when a normal attack isn't as attractive, you can use the vest power.

[ALEXAN2507]

Once you've figured out how this all works I may try and use this design as a basis for a Shade, The Changing Girl figure

[MrNobody]

Originally Posted by ALEXAN2507

Once you've figured out how this all works I may try and use this design as a basis for a Shade, The Changing Girl figure

If you wanted, it would be cool if she took up the Metan Possession power I ended up cutting. Like she starts the game on her card, and has to ‘possess’ a figure with 1 life remaining.

Once I have Shade settled, I’m also thinking about tackling his big enemy, the American Scream.