Putting it on display and then faking the power costs makes the weapon pretty much untouchable. If that's the sort of flavor you're going for, then go for it. If instead you want flavor of "this weapon is super important, if I lose it I'm going out of my way to get it back ASAP" then having an Andowyn-type power to fetch it out of the deck or discard pile seems more appropriate, and possibly adding another power to the mix: "When you would discard a weapon for its power, you may recharge it (▢ or put it on top of your deck) instead."
I have a concept for a power and I'm not quite sure it's going to be understood the way I intended it to. For a Hunter-Character:
When you defeat a monster by exactly the scenario’s adventure deck number plus 1 ( 2) or less, add that monster to your hand. You may banish a monster from your hand to add 1 d6 to your check to acquire an ally.
How would you think that would work?
Sounds like you're attempting to make the monster into a trophy of some sort to aid in influencing other people you meet (giving it out as a gift? That's the only reason I can think of for it to leave your hand); however if you overkill then there isn't enough left of the monster to recover.
As for power level, the best way to find that out is to actually make that character and run it through a few scenarios. I've found that speculation and actual playtest results are not always close to each other in most cases (both in PACG as well as other games).
Yes, that was (almost) exactly what I was going for. Even though my interpretation was that if he overkilled a monster, he would deem in unworthy to make a trophy out of it. But I like your take on that part very much. Its likely a combonation of the two now :-)
Thanks for the feedback!
Oh, and another note for if you decide to make a customer character with that power: it should be reworded to the following to account for a) that it only applies to monsters you would banish, and b) that it properly handles monsters with multiple checks to defeat.
Point a is important because some monsters due to their own powers may not actually be banished and it is likely important to do that other thing with them instead. For example, any Swarm monster needs to be defeated by at least 4 to be banished, otherwise it is shuffled back into the location deck but still counted as defeated. This character's power would overrule that and let you pick up the monster if you beat it by only 1, making it so that the Swarm power never comes into play.
Point b is important to resolve ambiguities in how the power interacts with multiple checks to defeat -- does only one of the checks need to be not-overkilled? Do all of them need to fulfill that criteria? How do you handle cases where another character tries one of the checks for you? The wording below makes it so that all of your checks to defeat needs to meet the criteria but that other characters can still help out by taking over checks.
As such, my suggested re-word would be the following. This is still quite wordy so if you want to actually fit it on a card you'll need to do some tweaking which may be nontrivial. To save on space, I got rid of the veteran qualifier and made the numbers static, the scaling was nice but simply wouldn't fit well on a card due to how much space it takes up.
Proposed reword:
When you defeat and would banish a monster, and your checks to defeat the monster did not exceed the difficulty by more than 2 (▢ 3), you may add it to your hand instead. Banish a monster from your hand to add 1d6 to your check to acquire an ally.
I very much appreciate your input. I did not think of those kinds of situations (and that after I played Balazar in WotR...). However I would like to keep the veteran power around, so I'll have to do some work to cut the number of words down a little... But that's something for tomorrow as it is already getting late this side of the Atlantic ocean.
The problem I see with that power is it encourges cutting combat close, which especially with monsters that have a if you fail condition it could go badly for more than just one player.
The problem I see with that power is it encourges cutting combat close, which especially with monsters that have a if you fail condition it could go badly for more than just one player.
Which is kind of the point though. You don't have to use the power anyway (or play the character for that matter), but since I tend to roll pretty badly it happens more often than you'd think that I would acquire a monster without really trying. I just think it makes the character more unique and interesting since I don't want to draw up a character that is more or less a copy of one of the iconics with a minor twist to it.