Yes!!! Fellow pathologic enjoyer! One of my bucket list things I wanna do with this game is design a custom pathologic scenario, I really should get back on that. Maybe after 3 comes out
@IzzyWizzySpoon i was really big fan of pathologic, but sadly no more. Was really dissapointed by development team changings and lead game-designer behavior (long story). Also funded remake back in Kikstarter era, and since game took so long to develop totally changed my mind, lost interest. But original one still in my heart, love to see people to know this obscure old project. Now when you mention it, Pathologic seems very arkhamy. Will enjoy custom investigators at least🥰
As a fan of game design, this is great to listen to. Power level tier lists are great as well but there are a lot more conversations about a design that you can have besides that! (Appreciate the non-music version as well!)
Thanks for listening! Personally I can't imagine a video like this without music but I know there are some people who hate it, so I wanted the best of both worlds for everyone.
Btw, small nitpick - sometimes background music is a little too loud and distracting. If you are planning to do more cool stuff, please, can you do it quiter?.. Music is cool itself, only little loud and contrasty Sorry if I'm grumpy Also! I have finally seen video to Monterey Jack. In my opinion his deckbuilding is really fitting for story: rogue illegal "Archaeological looter" beckomes more and more professional in nis craft via experience. But maybe in me speaks historical background, dunno.
Sorry about the music volume, if you’re getting a bit sick of it I’ll just let you know there’s a link to a version without music in the video description. I prefer watching videos with music like this but I know other people can find it annoying, especially if it’s going on for this long.
I really like the idea of a design their list (as opposed to power tier list) here''s some of the investigators that I disagree on you with and why. Daisy: I think your assessment is coloured heavily "old book of lore" being a little bit overtuned. If you stop making comparisons to old book of lore when evaluating tomes for Daisy most of them are quite useful in Daisy and can take your deck building in interesting directions and much more incentive to play Daisy thematically as intended, the girl from the library that grabbed a big pile of books before heading out on adventure. Different Tomes do suggest different play styles you can lean into, this style of play is more action intensive than just running the book of old lore, but remember that as Daisy you do get significantly more actions baseline than a typical investigator. I would put Daisy in A, higher if her design worked better for spikes. Wendy: I disagree with your assessment of Wendy being bland for two reasons, firstly her stat line, she is one of the few characters in the game where having a 1 in a stat makes thematic sense. You immediately feel that your character is too small to stand their ground physically but at the same time you can use your small size to get places that a larger person could not. Secondly her ability feels very much like the kind of plot immunity that children have in horror movies since the 80s. With the deck building I think if you are looking through the cards and they are immediately triggering imaginary scenarios in the minds eye, then the design has been successful even if the deck-building could be more restrictive. I would place her in at least B probably A. Zoe: Similar to Wendy if the character design is strong enough that I immediately know what sorts of cards I want to put in the deck, not having an explicit restriction doesn't seem as big a deal to me. It's easy to play thematic Zoe but if you have already played thematic Zoe a couple of times, then it's nice to have the option to build other decks. Jenny: Jenny is a very close to being a copy of a fictional 20s detective 'Phryne Fisher' including the guns and the missing sister. If you know the reference material (there's a TV series called Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries) then it does a pretty good job of delivering that experience. Though the source character would probably have an all 4s stat line rather than all 3s. On that topic I do like the all 3s stat line, It's an interesting challenge that requires that you evaluate the card pool differently to what you normally would. Jim: I think that Jims ability puts him in a really interesting design space that I wish the game would explore more. I do specifically like the idea of expanding the mystic precision archetype (think cards like crystal pendulum). Jim's biggest problem is that Jaqueline does just about anything that Jim is good at better. Tony: though not as overtuned as Mandy, I think that Tony suffers a bit from being overtuned. I was introducing the game to a new group of players and I decided to play Tony in a four player group, by himself tony was able to trivialize enemy management to the point where the game became less interesting. It would be hard for me to give him higher than a B rating based on that experience. He's certainly an investigator I would give to a new player to build their confidence. Amina: I haven't played her yet, (I don't own that set) but the all 3s statline appeals to me as I think mystics are in a bit of a boost your willpower use the same spells rut. While not great from a power perspective I do like this from a design perspective.
Hey there! Thank you so much for taking the time to watch and respond to the video, it means a lot to me. Design is in a big way a form of art and therefore subject to interpretation, but I would definitely like to elaborate on some points and respond as well. I don't heavily disagree with anything you are saying at all and of course your interpretation is equally valid For Daisy, I think the issue is that generally it feels like it's only worth playing one tome in the deck, not necessarily old book of lore. I actually have played all the action tomes in Daisy before, for the longest time she was one of my absolute favourite characters in the game. But each time I always felt it was only sensible to focus on one tome at a time, and while you certainly can play multiple different action tomes, it always felt like I was missing out because despite having two tomes with action abilities, you only get to use one with your free action. And at the end of the day, I do think Daisy is an overall very competent design, but this is being graded on a curve and I think she doesn't fit in with the A tier, but honestly other than maybe making the tote bag a bit more exciting I wouldn't change anything about her. With Wendy, I definitely think it's a hot take on my end as she's very popular. And I actually do like your interpretation of her ability and statline actually, it's very cool. There is a possibility that I am being too harsh but I am being honest when I say that I basically never pick Wendy to play Wendy, just to play the cards, and even though survivor is my favourite class I almost never play her as a result. Again, it's simply in comparison to others, in another game Wendy would probably be a classic character I actually didn't know that about Jenny as well! She even looks the same! But for both Jenny and Zoey I really strongly think that these characters themes and personality are undersold by having such mathematical and basic abilities. I understand that for some people that is appealing though, and I would rank them both higher on a hypothetical character "personality" tier list. Having characters like this in the game is also overall healthy, you do need some simple characters to latch onto as a newer player or to introduce players to the game, but I simply can't justify putting them in the same tier as any of the B tier characters to me I agree that the idea behind Jim is potentially exciting, but it's just not enough to make a complete character. I really wish he just had some other ability in addition to the skull thing to make him feel less empty I actually agree with your assessment of Tony to an extent, but I wouldn't have put Mandy in F if she wasn't tabood. The only characters I actually adjusted based on gameplay were Amanda and Gloria, because they both exist in a unique space in that simply playing the character at a baseline level forces you to break the game. If you don't play Amanda properly, you stall out and lose the game, so therefore you must play her properly and have to optimise to function. Same with Gloria, simply activating scrying style effects is both required to use her ability and impossible to not be game breaking. For Tony and Mandy, you are 100% able to self restrict and build jank because the abilities are universal. Especially true in the case of Mandy where you can pick suboptimal classes and deck sizes (during peak mandy I usually played 40 card mystic cus I thought it was cool). If I was grading on that criteria, I would also probably put Darrel, Mark, Daisy, Harvey, and Winifred in significantly lower tiers (among others) Your read on Amina was actually 100% my interpretation of her before I played her, including the idea of mystics being in a willpower. Unfortunately, in practice the fact that she effectively has no consistent theme to her off class means that all the cards you use to interface with the game still use willpower, so you can't get away with using your other stats as freely as her statline would imply because other than the multiclass EotE spells and the Scarlet Keys hand slot doom charms, there's not really any sensible cards to play that actually use those stats. Therefore, I feel pressured to run even MORE willpower boosts which makes her feel like she suffers from the rut more than most characters. For example, I've played an Ornate Bow Agnes deck to moderate success because her willpower is so high that I felt like I had room to make wacky stuff like that work while still doing the mystic thing, but I don't think you can get away with stuff like that in Amina Once again, thank you so so much for taking the time to interact with the vid, and I really enjoyed reading your takes on the characters. It links back to what I said about the fun or enjoyment of playing the characters being separate from their designs, because there are almost no characters in the game I would simply not want to play. I even would never have a problem with playing Wendy, Zoey, or Amina for example. I think the only characters I would be unlikely to ever play again are the F tier characters (excluding Mandy), Jim, and Harvey. Everyone else I would consider absolutely fun and cool enough to spend a campaign with
@@IzzyWizzySpoon No probs, I do really appreciate that somebody is discussing the game from a design perspective rather than a how to optimise away the fun perspective. Daisy is the starter investigator that I have played the most, but clearly not as much as you. While having more than one tome doesn't give you more actions, I think you are confusing the difference in utility between going from 0 to 1 tome and going from 1 to 2 (or more) with the cumulative utility of 1 vs 2 vs 3 tomes. What you get from an extra tome is flexibility, having a choice between say tutoring for an important card, giving an investigator a +2 boost on a stat for the turn or being able to travel up to 3 locations away with a single action are useful by themselves, but each of those options will be situationally more useful on a given turn. Also on average you will find a tome asset earlier in your play through and you will have an extra action more often when the mythos deck decides to start taking cards from you. Now the only place I am not sure about is playing solo investigator arkham where actions are at such a premium as I don't play true solo. I am currently doing a play through with Joe Diamond and Wendy through the scarlet keys after not playing her since my very first game of Arkham. I have been pleasantly surprised at how much flavour she brings to the game in every scenario and oh boy can she do some interesting stuff with a reasonably full card pool. If anything I think the reason I have avoided her is because she is because the character type is such a strong flavour that it can influence what a campaign feels like genre wise. Tony I think for me evens out to a mid tier for me - lots of good design but could have been a lot better designed power wise. So I took a closer look at Amina, and a theme did arise pretty obviously, she is a collector of mystical nick nacks. The type of cards that work really well with her are assets like scrying mirror or grotesque statue which improve her odds of passing a test without needing to boost her stats. Once you invest in sin eater these assets just become a better value proposition. With the money savings on your core assets something like arcane studies seems like a reasonably good option. (combined with arcane mirror, you will know exactly how many resources you need to pass a test). She feels almost like a rogue to me. It is weird that the assets that come in this set are not that good in Amina, but do look like good cards for Marie, with options for both turning on and off Marie's extra action abilities.
TIMESTAMPS
Roland - 2:33
Parallel Roland - 4:15
Daisy - 6:12
Parallel Daisy - 8:48
Skids - 10:53
Parallel Skids - 13:14
Agnes - 15:52
Parallel Agnes - 18:11
Wendy - 20:07
Parallel Wendy - 22:59
Core Set Thoughts - 27:11
Zoey - 28:36
Parallel Zoey - 31:42
Rex - 34:32
Parallel Rex - 37:01
Jenny - 40:05
Parallel Jenny - 45:01
Jim - 48:03
Parallel Jim - 49:56
Ashcan Pete - 52:00
Parallel Ashcan Pete - 54:28
Dunwich Thoughts - 59:53
Mark - 1:02:45
Minh - 1:08:45
Sefina - 1:12:11
Akechi - 1:15:12
Yorick - 1:17:55
Lola - 1:21:57
Carcossa Thoughts - 1:25:54
Leo - 1:27:08
Ursula - 1:30:56
Finn - 1:33:37
Mateo - 1:37:54
Parallel Mateo - 1:44:26
Calvin - 1:47:12
Forgotten Age Thoughts - 1:51:33
Carolyn - 1:51:54
Joe Diamond - 1:56:25
Preston - 2:00:05
Diana - 2:04:30
Rita - 2:10:07
Marie - 2:14:55
Circle Undone Thoughts - 2:23:22
Tommy - 2:23:55
Mandy - 2:28:03
Tony - 2:34:03
Luke - 2:37:20
Patrice - 2:41:20
Dream Eaters Thoughts - 2:44:48
Nathaniel - 2:45:17
Harvey - 2:48:33
Winifred - 2:49:26
Jacqueline - 2:51:13
Stella - 2:52:54
Investigator Starter Deck Thoughts - 2:54:31
Sister Mary - 2:54:55
Amanda - 2:58:50
Trish - 3:02:19
Dexter - 3:06:10
Silas - 3:09:13
Insmouth Conspiracy Thoughts - 3:12:00
Daniella - 3:12:26
Norman - 3:15:46
Monterey Jack - 3:18:55
Parallel Monterey Jack - 3:22:06
Lily Chen - 3:26:42
Bob - 3:29:09
Edge of the Earth Thoughts - 3:32:48
Carson - 3:33:12
Vincent - 3:37:32
Kymani - 3:40:51
Amina - 3:44:14
Darrel - 3:47:45
Charlie - 3:50:15
Scarlet Keys Thoughts - 3:54:24
Wilson - 3:55:01
Kate - 3:57:16
Alessandra - 3:59:21
Kohaku - 4:02:30
Hank - 4:06:11
Hemlock Vale Thoughts - 4:09:01
Gloria - 4:09:28
Suzi - 4:16:32
Final Thoughts and Goodbye - 4:18:39
Excellent video. I love that this is (currently) the only video uploaded here so this whole channel exists for this 4+ hour Arkham tier list.
Great video! Really enjoyed listening to your thoughts on character design😊
Enjoyed your list! Thanks!
Love pathologic ost on background
And video overall is really cool, you have help me to overcome arkham/burnout
Yes!!! Fellow pathologic enjoyer! One of my bucket list things I wanna do with this game is design a custom pathologic scenario, I really should get back on that. Maybe after 3 comes out
@IzzyWizzySpoon i was really big fan of pathologic, but sadly no more. Was really dissapointed by development team changings and lead game-designer behavior (long story). Also funded remake back in Kikstarter era, and since game took so long to develop totally changed my mind, lost interest.
But original one still in my heart, love to see people to know this obscure old project. Now when you mention it, Pathologic seems very arkhamy. Will enjoy custom investigators at least🥰
As a fan of game design, this is great to listen to. Power level tier lists are great as well but there are a lot more conversations about a design that you can have besides that! (Appreciate the non-music version as well!)
Thanks for listening! Personally I can't imagine a video like this without music but I know there are some people who hate it, so I wanted the best of both worlds for everyone.
Btw, small nitpick - sometimes background music is a little too loud and distracting. If you are planning to do more cool stuff, please, can you do it quiter?.. Music is cool itself, only little loud and contrasty
Sorry if I'm grumpy
Also! I have finally seen video to Monterey Jack. In my opinion his deckbuilding is really fitting for story: rogue illegal "Archaeological looter" beckomes more and more professional in nis craft via experience. But maybe in me speaks historical background, dunno.
Sorry about the music volume, if you’re getting a bit sick of it I’ll just let you know there’s a link to a version without music in the video description. I prefer watching videos with music like this but I know other people can find it annoying, especially if it’s going on for this long.
What an absolutely incredible idea for a tier list!!
Thank you so much for the kind words!
Very extremely happy that you mentioned doing power level and enjoyment tier lists too! This one alone is like a surprise early christmas gift
I really like the idea of a design their list (as opposed to power tier list)
here''s some of the investigators that I disagree on you with and why.
Daisy: I think your assessment is coloured heavily "old book of lore" being a little bit overtuned. If you stop making comparisons to old book of lore when evaluating tomes for Daisy most of them are quite useful in Daisy and can take your deck building in interesting directions and much more incentive to play Daisy thematically as intended, the girl from the library that grabbed a big pile of books before heading out on adventure. Different Tomes do suggest different play styles you can lean into, this style of play is more action intensive than just running the book of old lore, but remember that as Daisy you do get significantly more actions baseline than a typical investigator. I would put Daisy in A, higher if her design worked better for spikes.
Wendy: I disagree with your assessment of Wendy being bland for two reasons, firstly her stat line, she is one of the few characters in the game where having a 1 in a stat makes thematic sense. You immediately feel that your character is too small to stand their ground physically but at the same time you can use your small size to get places that a larger person could not. Secondly her ability feels very much like the kind of plot immunity that children have in horror movies since the 80s. With the deck building I think if you are looking through the cards and they are immediately triggering imaginary scenarios in the minds eye, then the design has been successful even if the deck-building could be more restrictive. I would place her in at least B probably A.
Zoe: Similar to Wendy if the character design is strong enough that I immediately know what sorts of cards I want to put in the deck, not having an explicit restriction doesn't seem as big a deal to me. It's easy to play thematic Zoe but if you have already played thematic Zoe a couple of times, then it's nice to have the option to build other decks.
Jenny: Jenny is a very close to being a copy of a fictional 20s detective 'Phryne Fisher' including the guns and the missing sister. If you know the reference material (there's a TV series called Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries) then it does a pretty good job of delivering that experience. Though the source character would probably have an all 4s stat line rather than all 3s.
On that topic I do like the all 3s stat line, It's an interesting challenge that requires that you evaluate the card pool differently to what you normally would.
Jim: I think that Jims ability puts him in a really interesting design space that I wish the game would explore more. I do specifically like the idea of expanding the mystic precision archetype (think cards like crystal pendulum). Jim's biggest problem is that Jaqueline does just about anything that Jim is good at better.
Tony: though not as overtuned as Mandy, I think that Tony suffers a bit from being overtuned. I was introducing the game to a new group of players and I decided to play Tony in a four player group, by himself tony was able to trivialize enemy management to the point where the game became less interesting. It would be hard for me to give him higher than a B rating based on that experience. He's certainly an investigator I would give to a new player to build their confidence.
Amina: I haven't played her yet, (I don't own that set) but the all 3s statline appeals to me as I think mystics are in a bit of a boost your willpower use the same spells rut. While not great from a power perspective I do like this from a design perspective.
Hey there! Thank you so much for taking the time to watch and respond to the video, it means a lot to me. Design is in a big way a form of art and therefore subject to interpretation, but I would definitely like to elaborate on some points and respond as well. I don't heavily disagree with anything you are saying at all and of course your interpretation is equally valid
For Daisy, I think the issue is that generally it feels like it's only worth playing one tome in the deck, not necessarily old book of lore. I actually have played all the action tomes in Daisy before, for the longest time she was one of my absolute favourite characters in the game. But each time I always felt it was only sensible to focus on one tome at a time, and while you certainly can play multiple different action tomes, it always felt like I was missing out because despite having two tomes with action abilities, you only get to use one with your free action. And at the end of the day, I do think Daisy is an overall very competent design, but this is being graded on a curve and I think she doesn't fit in with the A tier, but honestly other than maybe making the tote bag a bit more exciting I wouldn't change anything about her.
With Wendy, I definitely think it's a hot take on my end as she's very popular. And I actually do like your interpretation of her ability and statline actually, it's very cool. There is a possibility that I am being too harsh but I am being honest when I say that I basically never pick Wendy to play Wendy, just to play the cards, and even though survivor is my favourite class I almost never play her as a result. Again, it's simply in comparison to others, in another game Wendy would probably be a classic character
I actually didn't know that about Jenny as well! She even looks the same! But for both Jenny and Zoey I really strongly think that these characters themes and personality are undersold by having such mathematical and basic abilities. I understand that for some people that is appealing though, and I would rank them both higher on a hypothetical character "personality" tier list. Having characters like this in the game is also overall healthy, you do need some simple characters to latch onto as a newer player or to introduce players to the game, but I simply can't justify putting them in the same tier as any of the B tier characters to me
I agree that the idea behind Jim is potentially exciting, but it's just not enough to make a complete character. I really wish he just had some other ability in addition to the skull thing to make him feel less empty
I actually agree with your assessment of Tony to an extent, but I wouldn't have put Mandy in F if she wasn't tabood. The only characters I actually adjusted based on gameplay were Amanda and Gloria, because they both exist in a unique space in that simply playing the character at a baseline level forces you to break the game. If you don't play Amanda properly, you stall out and lose the game, so therefore you must play her properly and have to optimise to function. Same with Gloria, simply activating scrying style effects is both required to use her ability and impossible to not be game breaking. For Tony and Mandy, you are 100% able to self restrict and build jank because the abilities are universal. Especially true in the case of Mandy where you can pick suboptimal classes and deck sizes (during peak mandy I usually played 40 card mystic cus I thought it was cool). If I was grading on that criteria, I would also probably put Darrel, Mark, Daisy, Harvey, and Winifred in significantly lower tiers (among others)
Your read on Amina was actually 100% my interpretation of her before I played her, including the idea of mystics being in a willpower. Unfortunately, in practice the fact that she effectively has no consistent theme to her off class means that all the cards you use to interface with the game still use willpower, so you can't get away with using your other stats as freely as her statline would imply because other than the multiclass EotE spells and the Scarlet Keys hand slot doom charms, there's not really any sensible cards to play that actually use those stats. Therefore, I feel pressured to run even MORE willpower boosts which makes her feel like she suffers from the rut more than most characters. For example, I've played an Ornate Bow Agnes deck to moderate success because her willpower is so high that I felt like I had room to make wacky stuff like that work while still doing the mystic thing, but I don't think you can get away with stuff like that in Amina
Once again, thank you so so much for taking the time to interact with the vid, and I really enjoyed reading your takes on the characters. It links back to what I said about the fun or enjoyment of playing the characters being separate from their designs, because there are almost no characters in the game I would simply not want to play. I even would never have a problem with playing Wendy, Zoey, or Amina for example. I think the only characters I would be unlikely to ever play again are the F tier characters (excluding Mandy), Jim, and Harvey. Everyone else I would consider absolutely fun and cool enough to spend a campaign with
@@IzzyWizzySpoon No probs, I do really appreciate that somebody is discussing the game from a design perspective rather than a how to optimise away the fun perspective.
Daisy is the starter investigator that I have played the most, but clearly not as much as you. While having more than one tome doesn't give you more actions, I think you are confusing the difference in utility between going from 0 to 1 tome and going from 1 to 2 (or more) with the cumulative utility of 1 vs 2 vs 3 tomes.
What you get from an extra tome is flexibility, having a choice between say tutoring for an important card, giving an investigator a +2 boost on a stat for the turn or being able to travel up to 3 locations away with a single action are useful by themselves, but each of those options will be situationally more useful on a given turn. Also on average you will find a tome asset earlier in your play through and you will have an extra action more often when the mythos deck decides to start taking cards from you.
Now the only place I am not sure about is playing solo investigator arkham where actions are at such a premium as I don't play true solo.
I am currently doing a play through with Joe Diamond and Wendy through the scarlet keys after not playing her since my very first game of Arkham. I have been pleasantly surprised at how much flavour she brings to the game in every scenario and oh boy can she do some interesting stuff with a reasonably full card pool. If anything I think the reason I have avoided her is because she is because the character type is such a strong flavour that it can influence what a campaign feels like genre wise.
Tony I think for me evens out to a mid tier for me - lots of good design but could have been a lot better designed power wise.
So I took a closer look at Amina, and a theme did arise pretty obviously, she is a collector of mystical nick nacks. The type of cards that work really well with her are assets like scrying mirror or grotesque statue which improve her odds of passing a test without needing to boost her stats. Once you invest in sin eater these assets just become a better value proposition. With the money savings on your core assets something like arcane studies seems like a reasonably good option. (combined with arcane mirror, you will know exactly how many resources you need to pass a test). She feels almost like a rogue to me.
It is weird that the assets that come in this set are not that good in Amina, but do look like good cards for Marie, with options for both turning on and off Marie's extra action abilities.