Hey everybody. Just wanted to share a project I've been working on.

I noticed that the Mansions characters didn't reflect their Arkham counterparts as much as I would have liked. For example, translation of Stamina/Sanity to Health/Sanity wasn't quite on (why is Gloria at 6 Health? She was more robust in Arkham!).

So then I checked out the rest of their stats. While more characters are more or less even in stats, there were some exceptions (Mary's stats came up very short and Harvey's came out far ahead of the rest, for whatever reason!). Also, I'm sure everyone has noticed that characters with 6/14 or 14/6 health/sanity are a bit of a liability, since the keeper will target them with extreme prejudice if the objective involves killing an investigator or driving him insane.

Lastly, I saw that some items were far overestimated. An investigator who starts with a spell has a big penalty on his stats, but Shrivelling is really the only "good" spell. Harvey is not penalized enough for starting with the Warding statue, etc.

I got to thinking about how I would translate Arkham character stats to Mansions, and went about re-designing the official characters. Here is a link to the Google spreadsheet that details the new stats:

Arkham Characters to Mansions

Design notes:

• Conversion of Arkham stats to Mansions stats was based on a formula. On the first page, highlight a stat title to read the comments about them.
• I assigned overall power values to the starting items and abilities which I feel better suits them.
• Characters who had more "balanced" health and sanity got a small stat penalty, and characters with high disparity got a small stat bonus.
• Using the formulas, I was able to design 8 new characters based on their Arkham versions! Good thing I can buy individual pre-painted figures.
• When I first got Mansions, I read about all the card flaws and printed out replacement cards to paste over the originals. I did not know that a couple of these were unofficial and so a few of the investigator special abilities are slightly different from their official versions, whatever they might be. I also changed Kate's body card titles to Scientist and Engineeras kind of an homage to the ongoing feud between the two.
• I designed an item for Amanda called Gray's Anatomy but this turned out to be an official item for Vincent. My version was eerily similar to the official one! But this allowed me to instead give Amanda the sixth unassigned spell, which I was already pondering.

Let me know your thoughts on all this. You can also email me at tibs.chris@gmail.com where I will be far more likely to respond.

 Hi Tibs,

Very interesting thoughts.

I suspect that some of the starting items are overpowered, like the cult robe and the Liber Ivonis.

Others like Reference Manuel look great. Handcuffs seem underpowered when compared to flash powder, isn't it ?

Did you consider designing all of those characters so that we can just print them ;)

I will try to review all of them carefully and send you an email.

best

I have taken item strengths into account. Character stats have been adjusted to reflect this (as well they should!).

Yes, the plan is to have a printable pdf. I'll be working on that for a bit.

Okay! The PDF is online and available for download at BGG:

Revised Investigator Stats and 8 Custom Investigators

And here is the thread detailing the math behind the updates

Hi Tibs,

I did post a comment on BGG.

best

amikezor said:

Yes, I saw! As of last night, your comment was sadly the only one that was both relevant and civilized.

I wonder if it's worth mentioning that in Green Eyed Boy, I kept harassing the low-Willpower character with witches, but still couldn't drive him insane (barely) by the end of the game. That's got to be worth something.