Character balance

Well, Talisman isn't actually a game where everything needs to be perfectly balanced.

But with my late spree of Talisman (within one month I've got tons of games in!) I've really thought that some characters should be addressed. There are few that are just amazingly crappy, and others that are just extraordinary.

Four absolutelty crap characters are the Elf, Philosopher, Thief and maybe even the Assassin.

Two of those, the Assassin and the Thief are much better when there are more players obviously, but even if there are they are still kinda bad. Both characters are difficult to "level up" because of medium statistics, and both are at the mercy of other players doing things. Thief needs to land on a character that has usable items and to truly shine he would need a mule also. And Assassin depends on other players drawing tough monsters early in the game so he can go and assassinate them.

But even 4 player games seem not to be enough for Thief at least.

So if I were into house rules, I'd give both characters... something.

Assassin could have some kind of a poisoned attacks, maybe that one where always when he rolls a 1 on attack roll he can roll an additional die and add it. Ad infinitum as long as you roll 1...

Surely you couldn't depend on something like that, but you wouldn't be so handicapped at least in, for example, two player games.

Thief would be much better with Fate value of 3 and some other rule. Thief's style isn't very brutish force so fixing him with combat abilities would feel wrong. Maybe some kind of a stealth ability would help him and keep in with the "character"? Evade monsters wherever they are drawn, that might be.

Then Philosopher... I'm not sure how or why did they make this bad a character? Okay, getting to choose spells a bit is a powerful ability, but as he has no innate spell gain ability it isn't that much of a skill. And the other skill is almost a non-factor.

All "powerful spellcasters" have a starting Craft value of 5, and all of them are much better at spell cycling than Philosopher. I see no point here. Raise Philopher's Craft to 5 and raise Fate to at least 3, why not even to 4. That'd make him a lot more playable, though for sure still not as strong as other spellcasters.

And the Elf... Well, he just has bad rules and nothing can help this character if we want to keep the Elf's character too. Well he jumps from woods to woods... if woods get hosed with bad cards, then Elf loses his ability altogether. And it's really not a good ability. And other rules aren't really good either, they just protect a bit. Yes, Elf's statistics are pretty good, but to be honest, they're not that spectacular.

I don't know... if we want to maintain his hippy theme, I'd suggest a following additional rule on his character sheet: Whenever Elf lands on Forest he may replenish his fate to maximum value.


Then there are these weirdly powerful characters that are just way over the top. In my judgement they are the Alchemist, Vampiress and Warlock. Of course many characters are too good, but all of these would be easy stat fixes.

Alchemist is totally broken character. He has innate ability to gain lots of gold, lives, fate and spells. If we want to keep all those powerful special rules and make game interesting for other players too, the Alchemist should lose one life. Life value of 3 would make Alchemist pretty interesting character actually. He would be very fragile, but the rules more than make up for it.

Vampiress is in the same vein. She's the about only Evil character with easy access to healing. And not bad stats either. All are really good rules on her, so why they needed to make her a top tier character with life value 5? Drop that to 4 and she's a good character still, but not that... cruel.

Then there is the Warlock. Many have said that the ability to start in middle region is too powerful. I'd disagree, and claim that the starting craft value of 5 is too much. He's a very effective spell cycler with a maximum spell draw of 3 per turn. Drop Craft value to 4 and he still stays effective at that, but not so horrible.

So, if I were into house rules and wouldn't feel bad when using them, I'd really make the following changes to characters:

Assassin: Poisoned attacks
Thief: Fate 3, can evade monsters
Philosopher: Craft 5, Fate 3 or even 4.
Elf: Replenish fate to full at forest.

Vampiress: Life 4
Alchemist: Life 3
Warlock: Craft 4