Dante profile contest

[Lemminkäinen]

Here's my humble submission.

Dante - Human (Change) 30 points
PSI - 5/3 OOOOO - 1
CBT - 5/4 OOOOOO - 2,3
VIG - 4/3 OOOOOO - 4,5
SPE - 5/3 OOOOO - 6
Equipment : Patchwork armor (Pr): Torso +1.

Mercenary (perm)
A fighter with this ability has no Faction symbol. This allows him to ignore the Faction type restriction when creating your troop and therefore include him in any Faction type troop (however he is not considered to be part of the Faction in which he is recruited for any other game effects). If he is recruited in a Faction type troop, his PSI is divided by 2 when calculating the reserve of SP.

Emancipator (perm)
If your force includes Dante, you may hire any Matriarchy Slaves ignoring all hiring limitations.

Barbaric Sadism (perm)
When Dante eliminates an opponent fighter, any other opponent fighter at 10cm or less from Dante must perform a PSI roll with difficulty level of 4. Those who fail to pass this test receive a Fear marker.

Inspiring Liberator (action), (2SP, 1/round)
An allied slave located 10cm or less from Dante performs a Charge or Attack action immediately paying the AP cost as normal.

Fifth Sphere (action), (2SP, 1/match)
Choose an allied fighter 10cm or less from Dante. If the chosen fighter Incapacitated this round due to damage inflicted by an opposing fighter, you receive VP equal to 30 minus the Value of the chosen fighter.

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Some thoughts on the design.

The Agenda of Change was rather a given. Reading the short story it is quite clear. The points cost - I wanted Dante to be a force to be reckoned with so it was either 30 or 35 IMO. I went with 30 as 35 is the realm of true legends and humans seldom seem to reach those heights.

The stats were quite straightforward. I gave a high PSI of 5 due to his leadership abilities, CBT 5 since I don't think he quite deserves a 6, VIG 4 as that is standard and SPD 5 to show that he is agile. Though I did put wounded SPD to 3 as a sort of confession to old war wounds surfacing once damaged.

The amount of health boxes is also rather standard, nothing extraordinary. One thing worth noting here, however, is his high "pain threshold" in the torso.

I also gave him Pr +1 to torso to account for the armor on the mini. I don't think that he has enough on his legs to warrant a +1 there.

Then the abilities.

Mercenary is of course standard.

For the Emancipator, I worded it IMO very simply. It also allows him to recruit, e.g., Rampart-man who would normally require a Templar or a Berserk who would need an Inquisitor normally (Wrath-man also, but his special makes him a bit difficult to use without an Inquisitor). This is a fairly powerful ability but since you won't be able to make use of the Slave-Sister synergies I don't think it's too bad (Rampart-man for example is hit hard here).

Barbaric Sadism is simply because Dante is holding decapitated heads. It's usually not a game-changing ability but more of a flavour thing, really. Another standard ability so nothing fancy.

Inspiring Liberator - I wanted some synergy with the Slaves. At first I thought Rage counters but the story didn't really give that sort of impression on Dante leading the emancipated. Then I thought of simply giving a CBT bonus but that is sorta boring and can be very powerful on some slaves. So I ended up with Dante being able to command a close-by Slave to action, which fits my view of a leader. This is a nice ability since Dante's speed is high while many slaves have lower SPD values. I also have high respect for "chain activations" in Eden and even though this is not a full chain activation (like Magdalene's, for example) it is still powerful. 2SP seems like a suitable cost.

Finally, I wanted something that didn't have to do with Slaves but that was really nifty. Something that would give an interesting choice to make during the game. I think that Eden has been really good with these sorts of off-the-wall ideas that really pump up the urge to play so I wanted to continue in that grand tradition.

The name Fifth Sphere comes from Dante's Divine Comedy (the Fifth Sphere, or Mars, of Paradiso houses the Warriors of Faith) and the effect represents essentially martyrdom. The way it was done makes it a fun balancing act between choosing an important but costly ally versus choosing a minor but cheap ally, which is worth more VP. Hopefully the name isn't too obscure - it could be simply Martyrdom instead, but I rather liked the reference.

As for the length - that is quite a bit of text. Barbaric Sadism is the one I would drop if needed, but I compared this to Blue Henro and my Dante has 1183 characters while Blue Henro has 1432, so I think it should fit.

Whew! If you made it this far - congratulations! Thank you for reading and thank you to Taban for hosting this contest.